


Nothing Here is Cruel or Kind

by SublimeDiscordance



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: (Just so that's clear), AU: Adopted!Yancy, Brothers but not, Canonical Character Death, Eventual Fluff, Gift Fic, M/M, Mentions of Cancer, Minor Character Death, Prompt Fic, Prompt Fill, Raleigh and Yancy are still related, Sibling Incest, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, The Drift (Pacific Rim)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-01-05
Updated: 2014-03-06
Packaged: 2018-01-07 15:36:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 50,768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1121572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SublimeDiscordance/pseuds/SublimeDiscordance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Raleigh Becket grew up without an older brother but with a younger sister who was the center of his world. Until she wasn't. Until he was alone. So he does what any reasonable seventeen-year-old in the foster system does: he runs away and joins the PPDC. There, he meets Chuck Hansen, the annoying kid of his idol (his idol who also happens to be his mentor), and Yancy Benham, a washout who has yet to be given a partner. </p><p>This is their story.</p><p>NOTE: THIS IS NOT ABANDONED. Just on Hiatus until I get the time to finish it up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue - Who's Yancy?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [GrandDukeForever](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GrandDukeForever/gifts).



> This is a giftfic for GrandDukeForever, who is probably one of my favorite pacific rim authors on this entire site; if you haven't read her work, I recommend it. The gift here is a (late) christmas gift, as I decided to accept any prompt from her since, well, I can't really get her anything else. The (truncated) prompt was as follows:
> 
> "I would like a prompt that's AUish...or totally AU, whatever. Where the brothers were separated at birth, and then when they meet together later it's ELECTRIFYING but then they dance around each other (maybe one of them is shy??), and other people try to match them together?  
> Whether or not they find out they're brothers is up to you, but I imagine Yancy getting all morally conflicted if he DOES find out, and then maybe everyone at the Shatterdome being like stop being so stupid, no one cares, it's whatever...  
> Bonuses for everyone lives and also dog tags...somehow...and maybe a ring and a few wedding bells? Offspring??"
> 
> Title comes from the Epigraph below.
> 
> " _Leaving reason far behind / Nothing here is cruel or kind / Only your desire to set me free / Let us lie here, all alone / Worn away like river stone / Let us be the sirens of the sea / I cannot resist your call..._ " - "Sirens of the Sea" by Oceanlab

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This came out a lot sadder than I intended. Oops. I promise there will be fluff later on!
> 
> Unbeta'd, so any errors or eccentricities are my own.

The first thing Raleigh remembers is the sound of his parents screaming obscenities at each other.

He was curled up in his new bed—a big kid bed, he remembers some part of him thinking—and trying to fall asleep when the sounds of raised voices reached his ears. The words crept in through the crack he’d left his door open—he wasn’t afraid of the dark, he’d insisted, it was just so that he could make sure there were no monsters sneaking up on him—and bounced off his walls, muffled and distorted only slightly by the dinosaur comforter he’s trying to wrap around himself like a cocoon. Looking back now, he can pick out several key words and phrases that his parents probably should’ve reserved until they were sure he couldn’t hear them, but at the time all he remembers, really, is wondering why mommy and daddy were yelling. In his mind, adults only yelled at someone when they were in Big Trouble, so why were mommy and daddy yelling at each other?

It scared him.

It is also the first time Raleigh remembers wishing for someone else to be there, for someone to hold him. He hadn’t cried, not really—alright, not _loudly_ , though tears had streamed themselves down his face as the raised voices of his parents became progressively louder and angrier—but he had wanted so badly for a way to just block it all out, to make it go away, to make it stop. He had found himself wishing he were braver, wishing he could go tell mommy and daddy that they needed to not fight; instead, he had just been himself, small and weak and oh-so afraid.

He had wrapped his dinosaurs around himself more tightly, fingers fisted desperately in the fabric, as if it and its cadre of long-extinct reptilians could somehow shield him from everything he didn’t understand.

 

 

Raleigh was three when his parents brought his sister home.

He can still remember the feelings of confusion that led up to the event, asking his mother, “Mommy, why are you so _round_?” to which she’d only responded with her tinkling laughter. He also, though, remembers the fights when his father caught his mother smoking—something the man’d never seemed to have a problem with before she somehow changed shape—saying it was ‘bad for the baby’ and ‘damnit, Dominique, I thought we discussed this.’

But the moment that’s most crystallized in his memory is when his mother gently laid the squirming, pink tangle of limbs in his arms and told him, “Raleigh, this is your little sister, Jazmine.”

Then, he hadn’t understood exactly what the words meant. He’d looked up at his mother from the bundle and asked, “What’s a sister?”

“A girl who has the same parents as you,” his mother had told him, her gaze kind. “She’s a part of your family. She’s your little sister because she’s younger than you, see?” With the last word, she’d gestured to the small, scrunched-up face—eyes closed, mouth opening and closing soundlessly—before adding, “And since she’s a part of our family, that means we love and protect her. Especially you, since you’re her big brother.”

“Big brother?”

“You’re a boy who has the same parents as Jazmine,” his mother had explained calmly, eyes weary. “You’re older, so ‘bigger,’ than her, so you need to watch out for her as she grows up, okay? That’s the job of big brothers: to look out for their little brothers and sisters. Can you do that for me, Raleigh?”

He remembers nodding, face still locked on Jazmine’s face, but what he remembers most about that moment is the sudden surge of protectiveness that went through him at her words. This was _his_ little sister, so it would be _his_ job to safeguard her. Because she was his little sister. And like his mother had said, that was what big brothers did.

“Okay, mommy.”

 

 

Raleigh’s best memories of his childhood usually involve his sister. That first night was like a revelation for him, and he took to her like a fish to water. 

Whenever she would cry in the night, he would always be there, beside his mother or father (or sometimes alone when they were both too far gone to wake up), trying to soothe her as best as he could.

When she learned to walk, she did so with Raleigh holding her arms above her head to keep her steady, her delighted laugh making his heart soar.

When she said her first word (“Ah-lee!”), he’d been beside her, grin threatening to crack his face in half as she repeated it over and over again (“Ah-lee, Ah-lee, Ah-lee!”). That it was his sister’s childish interpretation of his own name made the moment all the sweeter.

 

 

Though they were few and far between, there were several bright moments in his childhood that didn’t specifically involve Jazmine.

The day his mother brought him his first Lego set, and he’d set about assembling the set with gusto.

The time his father let him ride along on the back of his motorcycle, the wind tugging at his flapping clothes as he screamed his delight into the helmet his father had forced down over his skull. The following argument between his parents wasn’t enough banish the feeling of _power_ Raleigh had felt atop the vehicle, though, like he’d been riding a rocket and was invincible because _nothing_ could catch him. The motorcycle was gone a few days later.

His tenth birthday, his mother beaming proudly at him through a haze of smoke while his father had had ruffled his then-too-long blond hair, telling Raleigh how proud of him the older man was for reaching double digits. Jazmine had been there, too, smiling through the gap in her front teeth and wishing him a quiet happy birthday. He remembered that it’d been snowing, which wasn’t unusual for an Alaskan December, but he’d still felt like the huge, puffy flakes that fell and made the _best_ snowmen ever were there just for him. After cleaning up from cake—Jazmine had smeared frosting all over her cheeks in her haste to devour the sugary treat the way only a six-year-old can—he and Jaz had chased each other with malformed snowballs, screaming with delight; Raleigh had screamed with cold at one point when his sister had shoved a handful of snow down the back of his snowsuit, vowing revenge and giving chase with renewed vigor.

The day he came home with his first real report card from high school, a line of A’s arranged in a neat column down the page. That particular memory, though, sends a pang through him, because Jaz would’ve been so proud of him. As if she’d been the one that raised him, and not the other way around.

 

 

Some of Raleigh’s worst memories of his childhood involve his sister.

It had started when she was eight. She’d been chasing him in the lukewarm summer air, birdsong in their hair, when, without warning, her eyes had gone completely blank and she’d just… stopped. Fallen, as if she’d been nothing more than a doll whose switch had been flicked to off. Raleigh had run to her side, screaming for her, for his parents, for _anyone_ , to come and help him. He gripped her shoulders to the point that he knew she’d have been whining if she were awake and shook her small—always too small—frame frantically. She didn’t wake up, didn’t respond; didn’t do _anything_. It wasn’t until he finally heard his mother running towards them, breath coming out in wheezing gasps, that Jaz’s eyes just… turned back on. And she’d stared at him, confused, asking when he’d managed to tag her back.

A battery of tests revealed nothing out of the ordinary, so it was assumed that Jaz had simply become dehydrated—little kids and the heat, they’d said: it was a serious risk—and lost consciousness due to a drop in blood pressure. Raleigh’s parents had nodded frantically at the doctors’ words, faces painfully hopeful that this was just a fluke, that it was something so easily fixed. They’d taken Jaz home the next day, with strict instructions to make sure she drank enough water—instructions which, of course, fell to Raleigh.

He took to what he would later call the Make-Jaz-A-Whale Project with gusto, placing glasses of water into the little girl’s hands at regular intervals and making sure she drank every last drop. She would complain, of course, that she wasn’t thirsty, but Raleigh would give her a _look_ and tell her, “Doctor’s orders, Jaz,” and she usually complied. On the few occasions that she flat-out refused to drink any more, Raleigh would run back to his room and rifle through the bottom drawer of his dresser until he found and pulled out the “Best Older Brother” card she’d made for him in arts and crafts when she was five. Flashing the orange construction paper covered in Purple and green crayon words at her—a reminder of the trust she placed in him—had never failed him, even on her most difficult days.

Then, less than six months later, it happened again.

Except, this time, Jaz wasn’t there for thirty minutes.

A tumor, the same doctors had murmured apologetically, at the point where her brainstem merged into her brain itself. They hadn’t bothered to check for it before because it seemed so far outside the realm of possibility, and the symptoms described sounded like a simple loss of consciousness. It was buried too deep, they said, for them to attempt to remove it, and scans suggested it’d already begun to infiltrate other parts of her brain as well.

They gave her three months to live.

She lasted for less than one before going away again and simply… not coming back.

 

 

In the wake of Jazmine’s death, Raleigh’s family shattered.

His mother took to smoking more often. Whenever his father confronted her about it, she would say something about how she’d lost two children and did he really expect her to just be _okay_ with that? The words confused Raleigh, because as far as he knew he was still there for his mother. The argument would almost always devolve into his father accusing his mother of not taking care of herself, to which she would simply reply that she had given away a child and buried another, so why did she deserve to take care of herself. The words never really changed, and Raleigh never understood what they meant, either. In the way only children can do, he simply accepted it as another fact of life he didn’t understand.

His father, in turn, began drinking more. He was never violent per se, but Raleigh distinctly remembered the sounds of dishes being thrown against a hard surface—the wall or table or counter, he was never sure—on more than one night. However, by the next morning—he didn’t dare go downstairs that evening—there seemed to be nothing out of place except for a few missing plates, cups, or bowls.

Raleigh, for his part, very quickly learned the consequences of coming to either of his parents with a problem or question of any kind. Where before they’d been kind, sometimes strained, but ultimately caring and willing to help or answer, now they were frayed at the edges and would start yelling at each other with increasing intensity, as if _he_ was all the reason they needed to be at each other’s throats. Raleigh would sink back against the wall and put his head in his hands—trying to block the sounds out, trying to make it all just go _away_ —until he managed to escape.

His question would still be unanswered, but, by then, he could scarcely remember it, anyway.

 

 

When the strange creature ripped through San Francisco, killing tens of millions of people and ruining three cities in five days, it was the most peaceful it’d been in the Becket household for years. As he watched the destruction unfold on the TV with his mother’s smoke practically choking him, fourteen-year-old Raleigh could almost imagine what it would be like to wander one of the ruined, burning, despair-ridden cities if he closed his eyes and breathed deeply enough. He clutched his knees to his chest at the foot of the couch, as if they and the wall of fabric at his back could somehow shield him from the horror staring at him through the pixels.

 

 

The week following the monster’s rampage, Raleigh didn’t leave the house. His parents wouldn’t let him. Speculation was flying every direction that the monster had been bred in some sort of secret terrorist lab and set upon the US, that it was a previously-undiscovered species and perhaps its intentions had been peaceful and mankind had just killed the last of a great race; the idea that it was alien in nature simply didn’t occur to anyone. (Two weeks later, someone would notice the Blue effect, and then all hell would break loose)

After a week, though, even they had to relent—they were running out of food—and Raleigh’s mother dropped him off at high school the next Monday. She fussed over his winter coat before letting him out of the car in a way she hadn’t for years—at least not since Jazmine had gone away (saying _died_ made it sound too final, too sad, in Raleigh’s mind)—making sure he was zipped up completely and that his gloves and scarf were protecting all his exposed skin from the biting, Alaskan cold. As his mother was clearly doing the only thing she could to protect him in the wake of some never-before-seen threat, Raleigh entertained the thought that, perhaps, he should take a small measure of joy and contentment from this moment. Years of distrust and self-sufficiency, however, squashed the thought like an overripe grape, and he huffed loudly the way all mothers expected their teenaged children to huff at being mothered.

“I’m fine, mom, I’ve got it.”

“Well, let me just make sure—”

“No, mom.” Raleigh uttered, catching his mother’s wrist in his hand, not holding tightly, but not handling her like a doll, either. He didn’t look at her. “I’ve got it. I’m fine.”

She sighed noisily, but withdrew her hand, making a small, sad sound before saying, “I miss your smile, Raleigh.”

He didn’t say anything, just stared at the glove box in front of him.

“You used to smile more, back when Jazmine was—”

“I have to get to class,” Raleigh declared loudly, manually pulling up the latch on the door before opening it and sliding onto the slush-covered sidewalk. As he turned back to shut the door, his mother started to speak once again.

“Maybe, when you get home today, we can try—”

He slammed the door on her words and trudged towards the squat building without looking back.

 

 

Just under four months after the monster of San Francisco had been put down with nuclear strikes that killed almost as many people as the monster itself, Raleigh’s mother was in the hospital with a horrible cough that wracked her whole body. At first the doctors thought it was simply pneumonia, but when her blood work came back they looked at her grimly and informed her she, just like her daughter, had cancer. It was Raleigh’s fifteenth birthday.

After further tests, they found that the reason for her pneumonia wasn’t an infection per se, but rather that the cancer was in the fluid-secreting cells of her lungs that were supposed to keep her lungs from drying out. The result, it seemed, was that she was literally drowning on dry land. What was worse, they found evidence the cancer may have already migrated to other areas of her body. They were confident, said the middle-aged oncologist who pulled the curtain around the four of them to deliver the news, that with chemotherapy they could at the very least delay any further spread and hopefully wipe out any metastases before they had a chance to take root. With that, surgery to remove the malignant sections of her lungs, and regular checkups, the haggard looking woman told them, she was confident that Raleigh’s mother at least had a chance—a solid two, maybe three years.

When the doctor gave them a moment to talk amongst themselves, Raleigh pleaded with his mother to not give up—to accept what the hospital was offering, a _chance_ —while his father simply sat beside the hospital bed, his wife’s hand clasped in his own and looking so _lost_.

Dominique Becket refused treatment.

“My daughter—my _Jazmine_ —endured this,” she said, holding on to a weeping Raleigh who was unabashedly begging with his mother to not go, to not leave him, to please just _stay_ ; Raleigh wasn’t sure if her words were meant for him or not. “I will do nothing less.”

 

 

His mother died on a Thursday.

Raleigh remembers it with startling clarity. He remembers the way, when he got home from school, he could just _tell_ that today was different. He remembers how the few machines the hospital had lent them to keep track of his mother’s condition didn’t show anything different; they were still displaying a steady set of numbers, still emitting their steady series of beeps. He remembers the stench of cigarette smoke still filling the room—even on her literal deathbed, she refused to kick the habit—and noticing that there was a veritable pile of ash in the tray beside her bed. He remembers that his father wasn’t in the house, the TV silent and the study door flung open to showcase its emptiness.

He remembers the way she looked at him, but clearly did not see _him_.

Maybe that had been it. Their last doctor—the same woman who had informed them Raleigh’s mother probably had less than six months to live—had warned them that the cancer was likely going to spread to other organs, potentially even the brain. Regardless, the thing Raleigh will always remember about that Thursday is the way his mother just _looked_ at him, and the way something akin to relief came over her face when he entered the room, dropping his backpack by the door, and took a seat in the chair beside her bed.

“You’ve come back,” she whispered to him. “After all this time, you found me.”

Raleigh was frozen in indecision for perhaps a few seconds, unsure how to respond, before he reached forward and brushed a strand of her long, dark hair—so unlike his own—out of her face.

“It’s okay, mom. I’m here.”

She shook her head at the words.

“No, no, it’s not okay,” his mother croaked sadly, her eyes filling with tears. “I was never a mother to you. I never had a chance. I’m so sorry for that, my love. I’m so, _so_ sorry. I just wish I had the time to earn your forgiveness. To show you how much you mean to me.”

“Mom, it’s fine,” he tried to soothe her, ignoring the moisture that gathered in his own eyes. “You did great! I couldn’t ask for a better mom.” He wiped his eyes with the back of his sleeve before continuing, grabbing onto her closest hand with both of his own and ignoring the way the digits were cold and skeletal in his grasp. “I haven’t really been the best son, either, y’know? I know I haven’t always made it easy on you, and I’m so sorry for that, too.”

He didn’t know why he was saying this. Nothing said his mother was dying—well, okay, _everything_ said his mother was dying, but nothing said she was dying _right this second_ —and yet…

And yet he just _knew_. He knew he had to get this out now or he wouldn’t have another chance. His mother, however, apparently had different ideas, because she lifted the hand Raleigh wasn’t holding and pressed the cool palm against the side of his face, faraway eyes imploring.

“Oh, no, my boy, my sweet baby boy. You have nothing to apologize for. I’m so sorry, darling. We just… your father and I, we weren’t ready for you. Please, you have to understand that. I never wanted what happened.”

Raleigh nodded as if he understood, tilting his head to wipe his tears on the shoulder of his navy blue sweater—the sweater she’d made for him right before Jazmine had died—as he gripped her hands a little tighter.

“It’s okay, mom. It doesn’t matter. It’s in the past. I still love you, okay?”

And he realized that, somehow, he did. Perhaps it was a child’s unwavering affection for their mother, but he did still love her. Sure, none of them had been any good at talking about their emotions since, well, ever, but it had always been there. Through the shouting, the anger, the numbness, the confusion, the _pain_ , it was still there: he loved his mother. And with that knowledge came another thought that flew past his lips against his will.

“I don’t want to lose you, mommy.”

The second the childish words were out of his mouth, he felt something new well up in his gut: something cold and strangling that reached into his chest and froze his lungs. Fear. He was utterly, childishly, afraid of losing his mother.

“Please don’t go. _Please_ don’t.”

He dropped his head down until his forehead was resting against his clasped hands, his mother’s cold fingers a soothing balm where they made contact with his skin. Tears were running freely down his face, but he found that he didn’t care. All that matter was the he hold on, that he somehow _fight_ this, even though a rational part of his mind told him that there was no fighting the inevitable.

“ _Please_.”

His mother let out another shuddering breath, but this one sounded different—deeper, more torn. The hand on his face dropped down to cup his chin for a moment before falling entirely.

“I’m sorry, baby, I don’t think I can stay much longer.”

Raleigh simply clung to her harder.

“I’m so sorry, my love,” she whispered, face a rictus of regret, words barely audible above the sounds of the machines as they blared to life; Raleigh blocked them out. “So, so sorry. I wish your brother were here. I would have loved to have seen him one last time before I go.”

“I’m right here, mom,” Raleigh whisper-shouted into his hands, but the words fell on deaf ears.

“Tell him I love him for me, would you Yancy? That’s a good boy.”

Raleigh’s tear-stained gaze snapped up. Who was Yancy?

“What…?” he managed to get out, but then his mother’s gaze softened, and for a moment Raleigh could see her as she’d been before: beautiful, radiant, loving, kind, filled with a _warmth_ that seemed to fill whatever room she entered.

“Jazmine?” she whispered, something between a question and a prayer, and then she let out one final, shuddering breath. The machines around them started practically shrieking.

Unable to completely prevent himself from shuddering from the tremors racing up and down his spine, Raleigh somehow managed to stand, his mother’s still-cold hand falling from his grasp, and silence the various monitors in the room. Then he sank into the chair again and let the grief overtake him, sobs ripping themselves out of his chest and into the air. He couldn’t even find the energy to lift his hands to support his head, simply let it hang there as tears and snot dripping down his face. His hands gripped down on his legs where they were resting on his thighs, his nails leaving welts in their wake even through the thick denim, but even that pain was inconsequential to the pressure in his chest that felt like it was trying to crack his ribs from the inside.

Raleigh Becket sat at his mother’s deathbed, confused and scared and _lost_ , and tried not to let the grief coursing through his veins consume him.

He failed.

 

 

When Raleigh’s father came home, the fifteen-year-old was still sitting in the exact same spot, head still bowed, fingers still pressed into his thighs. He was cold, but he couldn’t seem to care. As Richard Becket passed the doorway, Raleigh called out to him without turning his head.

“Who’s Yancy?”

The older man paused, but said nothing. He didn’t even turn to look at his now-deceased wife or the only other surviving member of the family he’d built with her. When Raleigh got no response, he added, “She kept apologizing to him. Said you two weren’t ready for him.”

Still no answer. Raleigh finally turned his head—the first movement in hours, and his neck ached and popped uncomfortably with the motion—to stare at his father.

“She called me his brother.”

At that, Raleigh’s father simply walked away, still not uttering a word to his son. Raleigh looked back at the body of his mother, unsure what to do.

 

 

Silence reigned in the Becket household after Raleigh called the hospital and they send a team to take away what had once been his mother. He didn’t speak to his father—rarely ever saw the man in the following week—and his father returned the courtesy. Raleigh thought it was because neither knew what to say: how to act now that they were all that remained of their once-thriving family.

After that week of silence, though, Raleigh awoke to the sound of his father’s old pickup truck pulling out of the driveway at two in the morning. At the time, he thought little of it, and went back to bed.

But then his father didn’t come home that day.

Or the day after that.

Or the day after that.

Or the day after that.


	2. Baby Fish

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Training begins, and Raleigh meets someone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Holy hell how did I write this so fast? *glances at the comments he's gotten encouraging him to write faster* *looks away quickly* NOPE THAT CERTAINLY WASN'T IT. *sweats nervously* Like wow, though, I wrote the last half of this in a single night. _TO_ night, actually. Well, this morning I suppose, since it's 2am.
> 
> So, as for the content of this chapter, it's not really fluffy or angsty or anything. This is one of those "AND STUFF HAPPENS" kind of chapters. Sorry. But it had to be done. 
> 
> This is unbeta'd, so please please PLEASE don't hate me if there are errors (feel free to point them out, though, and I'll go back and fix them). I'm still getting used to my new laptop's keyboard (it's a lot more sensitive than my old one) so I tend to misspell stuff a lot.

Raleigh stands among the throng of people gathered into the receiving area at Kodiak Island, and wishes—not for the first time—for a friend. Then again, he thinks ruefully to himself, it’s not like he ever had much of a chance to make any, what with being shuttled between seven different foster homes in the past two years.

It wasn’t that none of the families had been nice—several of them actually expressed an initial interest in possibly adopting Raleigh, and most of them, save one, had been more accommodating than was absolutely necessary—it was more that Raleigh simply… didn’t know how to relate to them. They weren’t his family. His entire family was dead (with the possible exception of his father, though the bastard was dead enough in Raleigh’s eyes). Why did everyone seem to want to waste their time pretending otherwise? Besides, it wasn’t like the families he left behind would have any trouble finding another foster child: there were plenty of orphans after San Francisco, Manila, Sydney, Cabo, Vancouver, and, just last month, Tokyo.

It wasn’t that he was ungrateful, either: he was extremely grateful. He had absolutely no illusions about what could’ve happened to him if these people hadn’t opened their homes to him. What’s more, when with his second foster family, the couple he was staying with had been fostering two other children—twin boys, no more than ten years old, whose parents had been killed when the military dropped a nuke on Oakland—who told him of their previous experience in a house that had been more like a prison than an actual home.  So yes: he was grateful. _Extremely_ grateful. The people who’d taken care of him had all provided three good meals (two on school days, because who could honestly call that cafeteria crap food?), indoor plumbing, electricity, a good bed, a ride to school, clothes that (usually) fit, and, most importantly, a roof and four walls. One of the families—the last one, with whom he’d stayed the longest—had even gotten him a cell phone. A real one, not a disposable one.

Raleigh pulls the phone out of his pocket. There’s no signal inside the Academy—or, some small part of him thinks with a certain degree of cynicism, whatever signal is present is being blocked—so his phone still shows California time instead of Alaska time. Not that it matters. He’ll adjust. Besides, this way he’ll just look at his phone and figure he’s an hour late for everything. Until it died, of course, because he hadn’t bothered to bring a charger cable with him. He hadn’t bothered to bring much at all with him, actually: the few changes of clothes he owned, his phone, his GED certificate (his admittance into the Academy at 17 was contingent upon him presenting it to his commanding officer before the day was out), and his wallet that contained a few crushed bills, a license, and a picture of Jazmine and his mother he’d manage to get from the house before the state had taken everything and callously dumped him into the system.

He’s suddenly aware of the fact that someone is speaking to the assembled horde of student around him, and he looks up to find Stacker Pentecost—the newly minted Marshall, former pilot of Coyote Tango, and the hero of Tokyo—giving them a welcome speech. Well, something that approximates a welcome speech. The words “grind you to dust” and “work you until you break, then keep going” may or may not filter past his awareness, but he blocks it out. The words aren’t important, Raleigh knows—anyone who comes to the academy thinking it’ll be easy is deluding themselves. What’s important is the man’s body language: the hands firmly clasped behind his back, back straight, face impassive yet oh-so expressive, every inch exuding an air of authority that Raleigh can’t help but respect. When the Marshall finishes his speech by asking the assembled recruits, “Have I made myself clear, recruits?” Raleigh joins the room in giving a resounding, “Yes, sir.”

“Then report to your barracks,” the Marshall calls out. “If you do not have an assigned barracks, you will be given one. Training begins tomorrow at oh-seven-hundred, sharp. Dismissed.”

 

 

When Raleigh finally arrives at his barracks—his admission was late this cycle, so he’d yet to be assigned—it’s to find that most of the other recruits have already chosen bunks and are getting ready for bed. Their commanding officer is nowhere to be seen, but when Raleigh asks, he’s told the man hasn’t shown up yet. He gets more than a few dismissive looks, given his age and the fact that even he knows he looks scrawny. He knows these people are all going to think of him as a pushover—as a guaranteed washout. The only bunk they’ve left is a bottom bunk, which, if Raleigh is remembering his observations on barracks etiquette correctly, is usually the spot relegated to recruits deemed weaker. Looking down at his arm after he shoves his meager possessions into a footlocker that, upon further inspection, also contains several uniforms, he clenches his right hand and pokes idly at the veins that pop into stark relief as he does, the wiry muscle underneath them shifting. He might not be the strongest recruit here, or the fastest, or the smartest, but that doesn’t matter to him: he just has to be _better_.

He might not’ve been able to save his sister, and he might not’ve been able to save his mother, but he’ll be damned if he misses out on this—his one chance to atone, to do something that makes a difference.

Someone calls lights out, and Raleigh hurriedly changes into the lone pair of sweatpants he brought with him. He just barely manages to pull them up over his boxers before the lights wink out and the room is plunged into near-complete darkness. He tries to block out the sounds of twenty-something other people shuffling in their bunks as they try to get comfortable, climbing into his own bunk and closing his eyes.

 

 

“Eyes open, fish!”

Someone is screaming. Someone with a very, _very_ loud and obnoxious voice. The words filter through to Raleigh’s brain, not connecting anywhere, and he rolls over to bury his head beneath his pillow.

“Do I sound like I’m joking? Eyes open and uniforms on! _Now_.”

Raleigh rolls over and cracks a single eye, has enough time to take in the face of an older woman in uniform with jet black hair held back in a severe ponytail that looks like it’s attempting to pull the hair from her scalp, before he hisses and shuts it again at the sudden intrusion of light.

“Alright, fine. Have it your way,” comes the voice—presumably from the woman, as the underlying phonations are identifiably female, albeit there’s a gruff tone of command that brokers no argument that coats the entire sound. “Any recruit not out of their bed in exactly ten seconds is going to be on the next flight out of here. Ten… Nine…”

And just like that there’s an explosion of motion around Raleigh, and he jolts awake himself as several important facts key into place: their commanding officer has not been by to brief them yet, this woman is walking around their barracks and barking orders at them as if she expects them to be obeyed, and she just threatened to throw them all off Kodiak Island. Therefore, his sleep-addled mind helpfully supplies, this must be their commanding officer. Finally. He flops out of bed and rummages around in the footlocker under his bunk. What time is it?

“Two in the morning,” says the recruit who just dropped out of the bunk above Raleigh, and he wonders briefly if he voiced his question out loud.

“Dude, stop talking and get dressed,” the man mutters to him, and Raleigh just grunts and pulls on the uniform they’d been given. He’s honestly surprised his bunkmate was willing to even give him the time, give that they’re all technically in competition here. After finally managing to not put the pants on backwards, Raleigh throws the white shirt on and stands at attention for their commanding officer, whom he finds out several seconds later is named Commander Amanda Troller But You Can Call Me Sir Yes Sir. After a verbal lashing from her about their slovenly state of appearance and a reminder that they _will_ obey her every word without question or delay, she pulls them all to the still-lit indoor track.

First, they run suicides.

Raleigh learns very quickly on that first morning—or evening, depending on how one defines it—that Commander Troller is not a woman to be trifled with. When a recruit asks her why there aren’t any other groups of recruits out exercising—something Raleigh had been thinking but had refused to ask—she turns a cold, calculating on the man and simply tells him to “get the hell off my field and pack up your shit. You’re done. If you think the Kaiju are going to wait for you to get your beauty sleep, then you have no place in this program.” Next is a woman who claims to not know what suicides are. Troller stares her down before informing the poor girl that she is not their fucking nanny and that she doesn’t have time to answer stupid questions.

Similarly, she has no tolerance for failure. The first recruit—she calls them ‘fish’— that vomits during suicides gets sent after the one who dared to question her.

After suicides, they run laps. Then calisthenics. Then more laps. By the time she leads them back to their barracks—now four recruits lighter—and dismisses them to get breakfast, Raleigh’s muscles are burning in protest and his eyes feel like they’re going to bore a hole in the back of his skull. He’s incredibly grateful for the fact that he played lacrosse at a few of the California schools he’d ended up in, or else he’s sure he’d be passed out on the ground right now. He catches sight of Troller moving towards the exit after giving them a brief speech detailing what she expects of them—exercises in the morning (though thankfully not always at 2am), breakfast, then academy classes where they will excel or she will personally drag their asses home, then lunch, combat training, dinner, more exercises, then finally sleep—and rushes to catch up with her.

“Commander!” he calls out, GED papers clutched in his hand. “Sir!”

She stops in place and turns, back ramrod straight, eyes blazing, before catching sight of him and stalking in his direction. Some instinct has him coming to attention, and he freezes in place as she makes her way back over to him.

“Something you’d like to share, fish?” she asks him, venom dripping from the words. She gets up in his face, close enough that he can see the light smattering of freckles on her cheeks, can make out the flinty chips of blue in her grey-green eyes.

“No, sir. I was ordered to hand this over to you at first possible convenience.”

He holds his GED papers out to her, trying to make sure his hand doesn’t tremble; after the workout they’d received this morning, it’s a near thing. The takes the certificate and associated papers from him without breaking eye contact—he winces internally at how roughly she’s treating the only thing that proves he’s eligible to be here, but manages to keep his face impassive and his eyes straight ahead—and finally looks away to glance down at the forms in her hands. He sees confusion in her expression for a fleeting second before she masks it—good to know she’s still human, he finds himself thinking almost ruefully—and continues reading. He can tell the exact moment she reaches the part of the form that lists his birthday, can see her brows furrow slightly as she does the math, then the moment that she puts two and two together to make four. She glances back up at him, face twisted in some emotion that he can’t interpret.

“So I got stuck with you, huh, baby fish?”

“Yes, sir,” he answers her, not quite sure what she means. There must’ve been a hint of questioning in his tone, because she continues speaking.

“They told me some hot-shot seventeen year old thought he was man enough for the PPDC.” She stalks closer to him, slowly closing the space between them. Raleigh finds himself thinking—ridiculously—that he’d be incredibly turned on if not for the fact that he’s terrified. “Thought that we were desperate enough to cater to his sorry ass. I honestly had no idea it was you. Or that I’d be the sorry sack of shit saddled with you.”

“I’m sorry, sir,” Raleigh answers, managing to shut his mouth before it can run away from him, but only just. She arches an eyebrow at him, mouth quirking into the most intimidating smirk Raleigh’s ever seen. He feels himself shrink internally.

“Oh, no, baby fish. You’re not sorry. Not yet anyway.”

Then she whirls around and stalks away, ponytail flashing out and almost hitting him in the eye as she turns, still holding his papers.

“Don’t expect any special treatment, baby fish,” she calls over her shoulder. “You’re sure as shit not gonna be getting any from me. Now go clean up and get ready for breakfast.”

Raleigh lets out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding and slowly walks back to his bunk. While they were on the field, someone had apparently stopped by and gave them all requisition towels and soap, and he grabs his supplies, strips off his sweat-soaked clothing, and heads for the showers at the back of the room where several other recruits are heading.

“As first mornings go,” he murmurs to himself as he lets the hot spray roll down his back, head leaning against the cubicle wall, “it could’ve been worse.”

 

 

Three weeks into training, and Troller is making good on her promise.

She’s taken to calling Raleigh “baby fish,” a nickname which most of his classmates have picked up. Around her, though, they just call him by his name—which, to his surprise, they’ve apparently all learned. He doesn’t know how. He knows the names of none of the people he rooms with. Honestly, to him, it feels like a waste of time trying to make friends or get familiar with anyone here: after all, they’re his competition to getting where he needs to go.

So far, their original barracks of forty has been reduced to seventeen. Troller likes to tell them that she counts any day she pushes them to the point of someone leaving as a success. Her record so far is when she made six people pack their bags on day three. Conversely, on a day when no one drops, she’s clearly, in her words, been going too damn easy on them—letting them get soft. She always makes up for it the next day. Raleigh tries his hardest to avoid her attention, to simply accomplish what she demands and not fall behind; it’s easier that way.

His classes are fascinating. Piloting, Tactics, K-Science (what little they have), J-Tech, and Combat Maneuvers. So far, Raleigh is keeping up in his classes; he’s outperformed the majority of his classmates on exams—though he’s by no means gotten the top scores—and has yet to feel completely lost, despite the material all being completely new. His worst subject is K-Science, because, honestly, he doesn’t give a damn how the Kaiju work or how full of phosphorous their shit is: he just wants to know how to kill the damn things. However, he takes to heart the words of his professor from the first day—“To defeat your opponent, you must first understand him.”—and applies himself as much as he can force himself to. Which, again, is only enough to receive passing marks.

Combat training, however, is by far Raleigh’s favorite activity.  For three hours every day, the recruits—they’re now considered trainees, though Troller still calls them all fish—in his barracks in addition to several others are paired up to spar. Every time is with someone different, though the moves each of them are taught on that particular day are always the same. Raleigh quickly realized that the techniques they practice each day sync up almost perfectly with the lessons in their Combat Maneuvers class. Typically, the C.M. class teaches them the more cut-down version of a move that allows it to work with a Jaeger’s bulk and general lack of speed, and then training teaches them how to actually perform that move, but with more finesse and skill. They take turns attempting to take down their opponent, but by the time training has started Raleigh has almost always come up with several counters to the move they’re going to be practicing. In his three weeks so far, he has only been taken down on five days, four of which were at the very beginning of training.

That’s not to say it’s been easy. Most days Raleigh goes to bed feeling like his entire body has been stretched and pulled and twisted more times that it can stand and forced to keep going. There was a day where, during suicides, he was terrified for a full hour that he’d pulled a muscle in his back. He ran through the pain, and, when Troller had asked him why he was lagging behind, he’d told her that he was fine, sir, nothing was wrong. For a moment, he thought he saw something flash in the back of her implacable gaze, but she’d simply nodded and let him continue. Afterwards, during breakfast, he’d instead gone to medical, only to find out that he’d simply strained the muscle instead of outright pulling it. They’d given him a salve of some kind that he’d applied under his shirt. It made his skin feel like it was on fire, but, less than two hours later, he was feeling fine. Troller never mentioned the incident, nor did she ask why he’d missed breakfast, and he didn’t bring it up.

However, after three weeks in training, something changes. Something that, though he doesn’t know it at the time, will completely alter the course of Raleigh’s life.

After three weeks of pushing his body and mind to their limits in the unforgiving metal halls at Kodiak Island, Raleigh meets Chuck Hansen.

 

 

“Oi, baby fish.”

The words are called to Raleigh as he sits at his table in the cafeteria, eating his lunch while looking over his J-Tech textbook. He looks up at the nickname that it seemed the whole damn academy had adopted—and, somehow it seemed, they’d all come to recognize him on sight—and tracks his gaze around the room, trying to figure out who had spoken to him. The caf’ is no different than usual: bustling, boisterous, full of men and woman talking and laughing and eating, the sounds bouncing off the high metal walls and making it nearly impossible to read, let alone study. However, this was some of the only time Raleigh had to do so, so he, in general, tries to take advantage of it. Some of the trainees in his barracks had, on more than one occasion, tried to sit with him, but he’d ignored them until they went away, opting to instead keep his nose buried in his book. So it wasn’t the just the fact that someone had called to him that makes him look up; no, the thing that stands out about this voice is that it sounded far too young to belong to any trainee Raleigh knows.

“What are ya, blind? ’m right here, ya dingbat.”

Raleigh spins around, coming face to face with a man-child.

There is no other way to describe the person standing before him. The kid couldn’t have been older than fourteen, yet his frame is broad in a way that suggests he’d started puberty early and hadn’t finished growing yet, but had most _definitely_ started growing outward instead of upward. Most telling, though, are the kid’s eyes: they are cold and calculating in a way that no teenager’s eyes should be, speaking to a loss of innocence so profound that Raleigh can hardly fathom it. Except for the eyes, though, the kid’s face betrays his youth, unblemished and dotted with freckles that Raleigh almost allows himself to think of as cute. The whole thing is such a pile of contradictions that it almost boggles Raleigh’s mind.

Short, red-brown hair decorates the kid’s head, and it’s all Raleigh can do to keep himself from pulling the ginger card to riposte the kid’s insult. Instead, he furrows his eyebrows and very poignantly asks, “And who the fuck are you?”

Obviously, that wasn’t what the kid was expecting, because his eyebrows raise as his green-hazel eyes widen comically. In a moment, though, the look of surprise is gone, replaced by a scowl. He takes a step into Raleigh’s space, and Raleigh has to hand it to the kid: he’s got guts, even if he’s clearly got a shitty attitude.

“’m Chuck Hansen, asshole. Who the fuck are you?”

It’s Raleigh’s turn to raise his eyebrows, because oh. Oh. This little pile of hormones and attitude _would_ be the son of his idol, Herc Hansen: one of the pilots of Lucky Seven along with his brother, Scott Hansen. As soon as Raleigh’s eyes widen, though, Chuck’s scowl deepens.

“What, y’ star-struck, baby fish?” The words are dripping with venom, and Raleigh lets it seep through his veins like ice.

“I have a name, y’know, kid,” he retorts, flinging Chuck’s venom right back at him, almost taking pleasure in the way Chuck flinches at the reminder of the difference in their ages.

“‘m not a fucking kid,” Chuck grumbles, taking a step back. Raleigh can definitely hear the Australian accent now; he wonders why he didn’t put it together before. “I’ll be thirteen in a month and a half. And if you have a name, why’s everyone call you baby fish, anyway?”

Raleigh splutters.

“You’re _twelve_? Are you kidding me?”

“Yeah, what’s it to you?” Chuck takes another step back, shrugging, scowl still in place. “How fucking old are you, then?”

“Seventeen,” Raleigh answers. “And it’s just, I thought you were older is all.”

Chuck tilts his head, scowl replaced with something calculating.

“So they let y’ into the Academy at seventeen? What are ya, some kind of goddamn genius? Although,” he tilts his head further, “that does explain the name.”

Raleigh sighs and drops his head into his hands, rolling his eyes where Chuck can’t see him.

“My name is Raleigh. Raleigh Becket. And no, I just bugged the shit out of them until they took me. I guess they were just desperate enough to finally say yes.”

Chuck moves his head back upright, eyes thoughtful.

“Huh. Alright then Ray—”

“It’s Raleigh,” Raleigh interrupts him, lifting his head back up, but the Australian continues as if he hadn’t spoken.

“—I figure since you’re pretty much the youngest guy here and I’m _actually_ the youngest guy here we should be mates.”

Raleigh blinks. He doesn’t even know what expression he’s wearing right now.

“Excuse me?”

“Look, you’re clearly into Jaegers and Kaiju and shit,” Chuck explains as if to a small child, “and so am I, and you would not _believe_ how boring it is to have no one t’ talk to—” _no, of course I wouldn’t_ , Raleigh thinks ruefully to himself, “—so I figure we can talk about this shit or, I dunno, _something_.” Chuck’s face has begun flushing ever so slightly pink, making his freckles stand out all that much more. He apparently interprets Raleigh’s silence as a need to explain further, because he continues. “Most of the other trainees won’t go near me with a twenty-foot pole. They hear my old man’s last name and they run the fuck away. The rest just want me t’ introduce them to him.”

Raleigh casts a pointed glance over his shoulder at his empty table before turning his gaze back to Chuck.

“And what makes you think that I want to talk to anyone? It didn’t occur to you that I sit alone for a reason?” As Chuck’s ears join his face in flaming red, Raleigh keeps speaking, overriding whatever Chuck has just opened his mouth to say. “And what makes you think I’m any different from the others, huh?”

Chuck’s whole face turns bright red as he clenches his fists at his sides, entire body thrumming with tension. His mouth snaps closed with an audible clack of teeth.

“Fine, you’re right,” he sneers. “I’m stupid, whatever. I’ll just… go, then.”

However, as the kid turns away, Raleigh feels something in his chest give way in a feeling almost reminiscent of guilt. Something about this kid—maybe the fact that he’s so _young_ but has clearly seen so much, and maybe that reminds Raleigh of himself a little bit; he doesn’t know—makes Raleigh want to avoid seeing him upset, to protect him. It’s absurd, but it’s there.

“Wait,” he calls out, and when Chuck takes a step away from him he stands and reaches out an arm, gently placing his hand on the kid’s shoulder.

“Just, wait, okay? You’re not wrong.”

Chuck at least stops and side-eyes Raleigh over his shoulder.

“Although,” Raleigh adds, “I don’t think the best way to start a conversation with someone you want to be friends with is insulting them.” He chews his bottom lip for a moment before finally saying, “But I guess… I guess I wouldn’t mind being your friend.”

“Damn right you wouldn’t,” Chuck affirms, small grin creeping onto his face as he moves back towards Raleigh’s table, shrugging off the man’s hand as he passes him. He sits down across from where Raleigh has his tray and books sprawled out across the surface, moving the textbooks he has a space of his own. Raleigh rolls his eyes, having just enough time to realize he’s been masterfully manipulated before the kid starts rearranging his stuff. He retakes his seat and shovels a forkful of the paste the cafeteria staff like to pretend is potatoes into his mouth; it’s grainy and tasteless, but it contains calories—lots of calories, he’s been told—which is something Raleigh needs desperately these days with the way Troller is pushing their bodies to their limits. He moves his J-Tech book back towards the top of his tray—purposefully infringing slightly on the space Chuck has carved out for himself—and resumes his reading.

After a moment of watching Raleigh intently, Chuck grabs the book out of Raleigh’s hands—the blond gives a squawk of protest, though that’s the extent of the noise he can make because he’s just put another spoonful of ‘potatoes’ in his mouth—and places it perpendicular between them. The redhead cranes his neck, angling it so that he can read, too, before he looks up at Raleigh.

“So, tell me about this shit they’re teaching you. And don’t leave anything out.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like, the further this progresses, the longer the individual scenes will get. Ultimately, this might result in the average chapter length getting longer. I don't know. All I know is that I want to get to at least 4k with each chapter before I post it. Unless I have a very good reason for it being less than that.
> 
> As always, thanks for reading! Any comments—especially constructive criticism—are welcomed and highly appreciated.


	3. Introductions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Raleigh meets a few more new people, and his training progresses.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I honestly have no idea at all how I wrote this in a day. ~~Blame GD~~
> 
> BUT. WE GET TO MEET YANCY. AS PROMISED.
> 
> Those with keen eyes will noticed that I've added some non-romantic relationships to the relationships section. This is to reassure everyone that these relationships are going to be, well, _not romantic_. 
> 
> Unbeta'd, so please forgive any mistakes or eccentricities. 
> 
>  
> 
> ~~also chaleigh might be happening I don't even know anymore I doubt it though~~

Being friends with Chuck turns out to be surprisingly easy.

At first, Raleigh wasn’t entirely unconvinced that the Aussie’s bad attitude (and, really, he’s never met anyone with a worse attitude than Chuck) wouldn’t drive them apart after a few days, nor was he sure that he and a freaking twelve-year-old could find enough common ground to maintain a friendship. But Chuck, as it turns out has a knack for surprising him.

Firstly, Chuck is a genius. Raleigh would be the first to admit that Chuck could probably think circles around him or anyone else who’s in his barracks, because the kid absorbs any knowledge Raleigh throws his way like a sponge and has insights that leave Raleigh’s head spinning. He understands some of the material Raleigh’s learning better than Raleigh does himself, and their “study sessions” more often than not end up with _Chuck_ explaining their latest chapters to _Raleigh_ rather than the other way around. The kid doesn’t seem to be bothered by it, though—if anything, he seems to _enjoy_ being allowed to parade around how smart he is. Raleigh, for his part, doesn’t mind: he’s never been under the illusion that he’s the smartest person in a room, so he accepts Chuck’s Newtonian-esque intellect in stride. Not that he doesn’t occasionally rib Chuck for how smart he is, because, come on, the kid has it coming with how rude he is to everyone (Raleigh’s slowly getting the picture that people won’t come near him with a twenty-foot pole more because of how Chuck treats them than the fact that Hercules Hansen is his father). Chuck, of course, acts offended and yells at Raleigh when this happens, but Raleigh doesn’t miss the small smile that the Aussie gets on his face when he thinks the blond isn’t looking.

Which leads into the second reason they get along so well: their senses of humor are almost identical. More specifically, both of them find great amusement in finding progressively more creative ways to insult the other, and the insults themselves become almost affectionate. Chuck still calls Raleigh “baby fish” on occasion, and Raleigh retaliates by calling him “ginger baby” or “shorty.” It works for them.

“You’re stupid, Ray,” Chuck tells him when they’re eating dinner together, K-Science book forgotten between them. “Cherno Alpha is _obviously_ the biggest, baddest Jaeger out there. Thing’s a fucking _tank_.”

This is another reason Raleigh enjoys his friendship with Chuck: Jaeger talk. They have vastly different opinions on what makes a Jaeger effective, and the two of them manage to have rather animated discussions about it without devolving into an argument. Admittedly, that doesn’t stop Chuck from insulting him, but Raleigh learned very quickly that Chuck’s insults are just a part of his vocabulary—a part of him. The redhead literally cannot speak to someone without insulting them at least once in the conversation. Raleigh finds it cute, though he’d never tell Chuck that to his face; Chuck is always wearing a pair of steel-toed boots around, and Raleigh rather enjoys his shins intact thank you very much. He leans over the table, using his height advantage over Chuck to give the kid a condescending smirk (he’s found himself getting better at them the more time he spends with Chuck; incidentally, he’s also found himself smiling more since he became friends with Chuck).

“ _I’m_ stupid? Cherno’s strong, sure, but it’s got no speed or maneuverability. They have to sit still and hope that their armor isn’t torn to pieces before they can kill the Kaiju. Or that it doesn’t try to dodge behind them.”

Chuck scoffs at him, eyebrow raised and looking far more smug than a twelve-year-old has any right to be.

“What, and I’m sure you know something better, eh _Rah_ leigh?”

“Uh, _obviously_ ,” Raleigh answers, raising his own eyebrow in response. “Tacit Ronin.”

Chuck laughs. Loudly. It’s a strange sound coming from the normally serious kid, contrasting with the image Chuck routinely spits in everyone’s face. Raleigh likes it, even if at this moment Chuck’s laughing _at_ him; he enjoys the times when he can make Chuck act like the kid he secretly is on the inside. It reminds him of Jazmine, a little bit.

“You’re insane, mate,” the redhead manages to get out between chuckles. “That old rustbucket is nothing compared to Cherno.”

“Sure, right,” Raleigh shoots back. “Because taking down two Kaiju without a damn scratch is ‘nothing.’” He makes sure to lift his hands to put finger quotes around the last word, rolling his eyes as he does. Chuck rolls his own right back.

“Yeah, and if it’d gotten hit, it wouldn’t be around to talk about anymore, now would it? Bloody thing’s made of tissue paper. S’just fast, is all. Couldn’t take a hit if its life depended on it—which it does, mind you, and—” Chuck cuts himself off, a confused look dotting his features.

“Mind you, I’m confused ‘bout why you don’t prefer Romeo Blue.”

Raleigh sighs and shakes his head. “Just because it’s the first American Jaeger and I’m American doesn’t mean that I automatically have to like it. I notice you didn’t say Lucky Seven, and your dad _and_ uncle pilot her.”

“Yeah, well, my old man is an arsehole who can go eat his own shit, and Uncle Scott is worse, so don’t even start with me. ‘Sides, Lucky’s a piece of tinfoil compared to Cherno. The Russians know how to build ‘em, I tell ya. Solid. Not like those Japanese ballerinas you keep goin’ on about.”

Raleigh laughs at Chuck’s words, though something in his gut freezes slightly at the way Chuck’s face pinches when he talks about his father; the words about his father are an all-too familiar refrain from Raleigh’s own mind. However, he shoves the feeling of unease down—it’s none of his business until Chuck actually makes it his business, after all—and instead continues their conversation.

“Yeah, well, at least those ‘ballerinas’ can get out if everything goes to shit. Russian Jaegers don’t pack escape pods.”

“No,” Chuck answers, “but they have _the_ most secure Conn Pods ever made. They _need_ bloody escape pods. Not t’ mention— _again_ —that they’re built. Like. Fucking. _Tanks_ , mate.”

“I suppose we’ll have to agree to disagree, then, _mate_ ,” Raleigh says diplomatically, conjuring up a horrible Australian accent that has Chuck wincing. He tries to keep a straight face as he lays his hands flat on the table in a sign that he’s done with their mini-argument, but the way Chuck’s face twists in irritation tells him he failed.

“Right. That was awful, so I think that, yeah, we can agree that you’re an idiot and I’m right. Sounds like a plan, Ray.”

“It’s Raleigh.”

“Whatever…”

A beat of silence. Chuck’s giving him a shit-eating grin, and Raleigh knows exactly what’s coming.

“… _Rah_ leigh.”

“Oh, shut up. Fucking koala.”

“Better a koala than a baby fish.”

“Ginger baby.”

“Wannabe.”

“Half pint.”

“Bean stalk.”

Needless to say, they don’t get much more studying done before Troller calls Raleigh out for his barracks’ evening run.

 

 

It’s not until almost a full week later, when Chuck and Raleigh are working through the technique of the day Raleigh had learned in combat training as well as developing counters and counters to each other’s counters, that Raleigh finally asks the question that’s been on his mind for close to a month.

“Chuck?”

“Mm?” comes the reply, the kid matching him step for step as they circle each other. Though Raleigh had initially been hesitant to spar with Chuck, the kid has proven himself to be both surprisingly strong and agile—especially given that he’s only freaking _twelve_ —not to mention tactically brilliant. Raleigh’s learned to respect that.

“Why did you want to be my friend?”

The question seems to catch Chuck off guard, because he freezes for a half-step. It’s not much, but it’s enough, and Raleigh dives in, attempting to catch the redhead in the lock they’ve been practicing. Chuck, however, is almost too fast for him. He starts his counter just soon enough that Raleigh has to change tactics and let Chuck have one arm free, but it’s not soon enough that he doesn’t succeed in pinning the kid beneath him anyway, the arm Raleigh let free flailing uselessly and punching him in the side. Hard. It was one of the concessions Chuck had forced Raleigh to make when he’d finally convinced the blond that it was okay to spar with him: that Raleigh had better not hold back, because Chuck sure as shit wasn’t going to. Raleigh had given a noncommittal “Mmhmm” at the Aussie’s words, not really expecting much of a fight. Then Chuck had beaten him. Five times in a row. Each time, Chuck managed to pin him with the same move, but modified slightly on the fly to deflect whatever counter Raleigh tried. God damn geniuses.

So, it’s no surprise when Chuck’s flailing punches to Raleigh’s midsection _hurt_ , and he lets out a whuf of breath.

“Jesus, kid. Know when to give up.”

“Fuck off,” comes the muffled response where Raleigh is mashing the side of Chuck’s face into the mat.

“Only if you say please,” Raleigh teases, then winces as Chuck continues whaling on his ribs. Right, teasing Chuck when he’s losing: bad idea. With a frustrated sigh, he tightens his hold, and twists the arm he does have in his grasp back to a painful angle. Chuck lets out a frustrated grunt and spews a few choice expletives, but otherwise gives no sign of giving up.

“Chuck,” he warns, twisting the kid’s arm incrementally further. Chuck’s entire body goes rigid and his flailing ceases.

“Jesus fuck, _fine_ , just _lay_ _off_ , ya bastard.”

Raleigh immediately lets go, standing up and back as quickly as possible. He’s known chuck to try to give him a black eye whenever Raleigh forces his hand like that; the redhead certainly lives up to his reputation as a firebrand. Chuck stands, wincing and rubbing at his shoulder. He casts a glower in Raleigh’s direction before moving the hand at his shoulder to the back of his neck in a gesture that’s so adorably _Chuck_ it makes something in Raleigh’s heart clench a little. He wonders for a moment if this is what it feels like to be a successful older brother instead of a failure.

“I heard about ya from people talking in the caf’, alright?” Chuck’s vowels are particularly drawn out (“ _awl-riyt_?”), something Raleigh’s noticed he does when he’s pissed or embarrassed; the former is definitely more common, though. “They said that there was a _kid_ here, and they definitely didn’t mean me because ‘m not just some fuckin’ _kid_ , y’know. Anyway, they kept calling ya ‘baby fish,’ which wasn’t that hard to figure out, and then one of ‘em pointed ya out t’ his friends or somethin’, and, I dunno, I just…”

Chuck trails off, hand rubbing furiously at the back of his neck as his eyes go unfocused and to his feet. Raleigh moves closer, reaching out and resting his palm on Chuck’s upraised forearm to get the redhead to stop, then pushing gently until the kid is looking him in the eye. He smiles, which makes the hint of a scowl that’d been dancing around Chuck’s face deepen in what Raleigh can only guess is annoyance.

“You were lonely and looking for another lonely soul you could relate to,” Raleigh fills in, looking Chuck in the eye for confirmation; the hazel depths remain inscrutable within Chuck’s frown. “You wanted a friend and thought I needed one, too.”

Chuck’s scowl deepens even further, but Raleigh sees something—some emotion that certainly isn’t anger—flash behind the kid’s eyes before he (almost convincingly) growls, “No, fuck you, y’ wanker, I just figured y’ needed a friend and thought ‘why the fuck not? Might as well do this lonely sod a favor.’”

Raleigh snorts, getting back into a ready position and circling. Across from him, Chuck does the same, fake scowl cracking slightly.

“You keep telling yourself that, Hansen.”

When Chuck laughs at his words, Raleigh manages to pin him again, the laughter transforming into a howl of anger. It’s the last time that day Chuck allows him to do so.

 

 

Two and a half months after arriving at the Jaeger academy finds Raleigh in Troller’s office.

It’s small, Raleigh finds himself thinking. He’s seen bigger janitorial closets. Though, clearly, since the laws of physics have no business in her world, Troller has managed to cram a desk into the space _and_ managed to give the Spartan room an air of cold, calculating menace. He feels like he’s on trial as he sits at attention in the uncomfortable metal chair—seriously, _how_?—between the desk and the door, the corrugated metal digging into his back and butt. He looks around almost desperately for any sign of humanity in the room—a picture, a diploma, a houseplant, _anything_ —in the space without actually turning his body, but he comes up empty. Across from him and behind the desk, Troller’s face is inscrutable as she leans her weight onto her elbows, chin propped on her closed fists, and narrows her eyes at him.

“Do you know why you’re here today, baby fish?”

There’s something accusatory—not _vaguely_ accusatory, more like ‘tried-and-convicted’ accusatory—in her words. It claws at Raleigh’s already slightly frayed nerves, and he has to resist the urge to squirm as he stares Troller in the eye.

“No, sir.” He answers.

“Don’t play dumb with me, Becket,” Troller retorts, and Raleigh nearly jumps at the unusual sound of his name from between Troller’s lips. “I’ve been told by several reputable sources that you’ve been seen in the company of one Charles Hansen.”

Confusion twists Raleigh’s face, and, before he can stop himself, the question is forming itself on his lips.

“Chuck, sir?”

Troller narrows her eyes at him in annoyance.

“Yes, Becket, Charles ‘Chuck’ Hansen. You’ve been seen practicing combat techniques with him as well as giggling like a pair of damn schoolgirls over meals together.”

“With respect, sir,” Raleigh has no idea where the words are coming from, but he can’t seem to make himself stop, “I fail to see the relevance of my friendship with Chuck to my training. We’re just friends, sir.”

Something flashes in Troller’s narrowed eyes. She leans back and drops her fists to the table. When she speaks, her voice is a deadly whisper.

“Give me that kind of insubordination again, _trainee_ , and you can kiss your chance in this program goodbye. The only reason I don’t throw your sorry ass out into the cold right here and now is that we have not yet finished our conversation. That and the fact that I’ve never before had the _privilege_ to speak to you in my office until today,” the sarcasm dripping from her words is almost palpable, “and it would seem to be such an awful waste if our first real chance to talk was also our last.”

Raleigh stays silent. A bead of sweat drips down the indent of his ramrod-straight spine, cold fear chasing it all the way down. After ten of Raleigh’s heartbeats, Troller seems to relax, though only incrementally; at least Raleigh can’t hear the tendons in her fists creaking anymore as she clenches them on the desk.

“Not that it’s any of your business, baby fish, but Hercules Hansen is an old friend. I knew his wife before Scissure.”

She looks away from Raleigh and opens a drawer in the desk, pulling out a service pistol and placing it on the metal surface between them with an ominous clang of metal on metal. Still not looking him, she begins field-stripping the weapon, looking over each part before she pulls a rag out of the same drawer and begins cleaning imaginary specks of dirty from the polished surface.

“I make it my business to take note of what kind of trouble baby Hansen is getting himself into while his father is otherwise occupied,” she continues, tone conversational. “And, when I deem that he’s bitten off more than he can chew, I take care of it.”

She looks back up at Raleigh, and, against his will, he shrinks back a half inch at the _look_ Troller’s giving him.

“We’re not going to have trouble, are we baby fish?”

“N-no, sir,” Raleigh manages to stammer out. Troller looks down, turning her attention to reassembling the pistol. Raleigh counts thirty three beats of his too-quick heart before she finishes, drawing a magazine out of the desk and sliding it home, chambering the first round. Her eyes move back to him, and there’s a hint of something almost predatory in her gaze.

“Good. Ensure it stays that way.”

She puts the pistol back in its drawer, not looking away from Raleigh the whole time, before shutting it away and placing her hands flat on the desk between them. Her face has returned to its usual appearance of an inscrutable mask of authority.

“There’s also the matter of the other trainees,” she explains. “I’ve had several complaints that your sessions with Chuck are unfair because his father is a Jaeger pilot. While they are _technically_ incorrect in their assertions, I could, on those grounds alone, order you to stay away from the boy.”

Troller tilts her head to the side almost imperceptibly, as if she’s trying to convey something to Raleigh without actually saying it. Despite the motion, Raleigh feels the fear gripping his spine dig its icy fingers in deep.

“However, I have elected to not do so.”

“Thank you, sir,” Raleigh breathes out, the icy sensation thawing slightly.

“Don’t thank me yet, baby fish,” Troller cuts back at him almost instantly. “I haven’t elected to do so, _yet_. You’re not leaving this office until you explain to me, in no uncertain terms, the _exact_ nature of your relationship with Chuck and what _exactly_ your intentions are.”

“Sir,” Raleigh answered, “he’s nothing more than a friend, I promise you. That’s really all there is to it. We study together because he wants to learn what they teach us here at the Academy.” His face stretches into a wry grin before he can stop it. “I have a feeling he’d steal my books if I didn’t let him see them, sir. He’s quite, ah…” He trails off, looking for the right word.

“Stubborn?” Troller fills in, and for a second—for perhaps a _tenth_ of a second—Raleigh _swears_ he sees a genuine smile on her face before she schools herself back into her usual, unforgiving self.

“Exactly,” Raleigh hurriedly says, not dwelling on the moment. “I didn’t want to spar with him at first, actually. Kid’s persistent, though; took me down a couple times before he convinced me not to pull my punches. But I’d never hurt him,” he quickly adds, seeing a storm brewing behind Troller’s eyes. “He’s, well, he’s like a little brother to me, sir. He reminds me of my sister, I guess.”

It’s the first time Raleigh’s ever actually said the words aloud, and he’s surprised by how sincere they sound. When he catches sight of the arched eyebrow Troller is sending his way, Raleigh elaborates, grin falling from his face.

“I had a younger sister growing up. She was three and a half years younger than me, give or take. She died when I was, god, twelve? Either way, she was—it— _I_ was the one who raised Jazmine, sir.” He hates how he’s stumbling over his words—the way his voice had cracked on his sister’s name—but, again, this is another of those things he’s never really allowed himself to talk about openly, either. Foster parents didn’t want to hear about the tragedies of one’s life, especially when, with the Kaiju running around, there was more than enough tragedy to spare. “I took care of her when she was little, changed her diapers, fed her when she was hungry: _I_ raised her. She died in a hospital bed two feet away from me, and there was nothing I could do.”

He refuses to lift a hand to wipe away the tears gathering at the corners of his vision, instead keeping them locked at his sides and his gaze fixed on Troller’s face.

“So, I guess what I’m trying to say, sir, is that I would never— _could_ never—intentionally hurt Chuck. And as for my intentions, I mean, I guess I just thought he needed a friend and he thought the same, so we just kind of… became friends. I don’t have any intentions beyond that. Sir,” he adds the last word belatedly.

Troller studies him for a moment, gaze calculating, before she leans back in her chair with a sigh.

“Fine. I’ll allow it.” Raleigh barely has enough time to murmur a “Thank you, sir,” before she’s overriding him. “But make no mistake: if you _do_ harm that boy, well, I’ll let him and his father have their fun with you first before I put a bullet in your brain and dip you in a vat of kaiju blood so that no one will ever find your body. Are we clear, baby fish?”

Raleigh straightens his spine where it’d begun to relax slightly. He has absolutely no doubt that the woman in front of him is not exaggerating in the slightest. “Yes, sir.”

“Good,” Troller sighs before bringing a hand to her forehead, seeming to ponder something before she speaks again. Her words are softer than Raleigh has ever heard them before. “And, off the record, Becket, I’m also allowing this because I’ve seen Chuck smile more in the last month and a half than the entire time since Angela died.” Her eyes zero in on him, sharp and cutting. “Don’t screw this up.”

“I won’t, sir,” he promises, though he couldn’t say whether he was promising her or himself.

“Then that will be all, trainee. Close the door on your way out. And don’t forget about tomorrow.”

As soon as Raleigh gets outside the office, metal door banging shut behind him, the object of their conversation practically assaults him before he has time to ponder Troller’s last words.

“So what did the troll want, eh?” Chuck asks, crowding into Raleigh’s personal space. Raleigh pushes the overenthusiastic redhead off of him with a fond smile.

“Don’t call her that. She’s actually not that bad. And she just wanted to make sure I wasn’t using you to get ahead. Or to get to your dad, I think,” he muses, going over their conversation in his head. “She never actually said it, though, so I’m not sure. She just asked what my intentions were.”

Chuck snorts.

“Intentions. Right. Like you could have bad intentions, mate. You’re about as harmless as a bunny.”

Raleigh allows himself to chortle then, tension draining out of him as he does. “Dude, clearly you’ve never seen Monty Python’s Quest for the Holy Grail. Rabbits can be terrifying.”

That gets him an eye roll.

“Right, because you’re the bloody Rabbit of Caerbannog.” When Raleigh raises an eyebrow, Chuck blushes. “Shut up, ‘m not a complete shut-in. Gotta do _something_ while the old man’s out kicking kaiju arse.” The blond just laughs again. It makes Chuck blush, which, in turn, makes Raleigh laugh even more, which, in turn, makes Chuck blush an even deeper shade of crimson.

“Oh my god, shut _up_ , ya arsehole. People ‘re gonna think you’re fucking nuts if you don’t stop.”

Raleigh ignores the words in favor of wheezing out, “You’re such a huge geek, Chuckles. Didn’t know you had it in you.” Which is a lie. Raleigh’s known since about the third day he knew Chuck just _exactly_ how big of a geek the kid is.

“Oi, don’t call me that!”

Raleigh just laughs harder.

 

 

That night, Raleigh sits up frantically in bed, sleep-deprived brain having finally connected Troller’s words with the first conversation he and Chuck had shared.

“Fuck,” he whispers, running his hands over his face.

“Dude,” whispers the guy above him—Raleigh still doesn’t know his name—in a tone that suggests he was halfway asleep before Raleigh’s muted outburst. “Shut the fuck up.”

Raleigh does just that, but he can’t sleep. His mind is whirling endlessly, trying to come up with possibilities, scenarios, _anything_.

Because, tomorrow, Chuck Hansen turns thirteen.

 

 

As it turns out, Raleigh needn’t have worried. When Chuck finds him the next day at lunch, it’s with an adorable, wrinkly puppy tucked under his arms.

“Isn’t he the cutest fucking thing you’ve ever seen?” Chuck practically yells in the middle of the caf’, shoving the brown and white mass of wrinkles in Raleigh’s face. “His name is Max and dad got him for me for my birthday.”

The puppy in question seems to be squirming happily in Chuck’s grip, nosing forward and tongue darting out as he tries to lick at Raleigh’s face, then thinking better of it as he tries to reach back and lick at _Chuck’s_ face. Chuck just laughs at the dog’s antics—and for once, Raleigh really can see him as just a thirteen-year-old kid—and pulls Max to his chest, nuzzling at the puppy’s wet nose.

“Yeah,” Raleigh agrees, finally answering Chuck’s question; not that he thinks the redhead hears him, too wrapped up in the yipping lump of fur in his arms. “He’s perfect. Happy birthday, Chuck.”

 

 

From then on, whenever Raleigh and Chuck hang out, study, or spar, Max is always with them, wagging his stubby tail. He sits obediently on the sidelines when the two of them spar, barking happily whenever one of them gets pinned because he’ll run over and lick whoever’s closer to the ground—usually the loser—on the face. When they’re studying, he curls up and goes to sleep either at their feet or on one of Raleigh’s books. More than once, he’s gone to sleep on the book they’ve been reading from, and neither of them have the heart to move him; they usually end up switching subjects. Sometimes, though, they simply stop and talk about other things: life, how much Chuck despises his father (apparently getting him Max ameliorated his animosity, though only somewhat), Raleigh’s experiences in the foster system. Chuck once asks him if he keeps in contact with his old families, but Raleigh simply shrugs and replies that he hadn’t really thought about it much: they weren’t family to him, after all, just people who were kind enough to take care of him for a little while.

Chuck snorts softly. “What, Ray, they weren’t like family to you even though they did everything for you a family’s s’pposed to?”

“Family’s not about what they’re supposed to do,” Raleigh answers him patiently. “It’s about whether or not they care enough to actually try to get to know you and become a part of your life.”

Chuck pauses, contemplative look on his face, before he asks, “What, you mean kind of like us?”

Raleigh’s heart may or may not skip a beat when he hears the words.

“Yeah, Chuckles,” he answers, ruffling Chuck’s hair. The action earns him an indignant squawk of protest, which he ignores with ease. “Just like us.”

 

 

A few days after that particular conversation, Raleigh happens upon Chuck while the redhead is talking to another kid. Specifically, a small, Asian girl whom Raleigh immediately recognizes from the vids as the sole survivor of Onibaba’s attack several months ago: Mako Mori. She catches sight of him and immediately turns away, which makes Chuck look over to where she’d been looking. He catches sight of Raleigh and calls the trainee over.

“Oi, Becket, this is Mako Mori. Stacker brought her from the Hong Kong Shatterdome. ‘m just showing her around.”

Raleigh crouches down, hyperaware of the way Mako shies away from him; not that he blames her: he’s seen the vids of what she went through, and doubts they come even halfway close to the reality.

“Hey Mako,” he says softly, extending a hand to her. “It’s nice to meet you.”

She cocks her head at him curiously after a moment, but finally extends her own arm and clasps her smaller hand in his own.

“N-nice to meet you, too,” she gets out in accented English before pulling her hand back.

And just like that, their little family grows once again.

 

 

“Baby fish, my office, _now_.”

The words ring through the caf’, and Raleigh nearly chokes on his meatloaf in surprise; a thread of panic runs down his spine before he can stop it. Chuck and Mako look up from where the younger girl has been teaching Chuck Japanese—the three of them decided to take a break from K-Science for the day—and Chuck gestures at Raleigh to follow the direction of Troller’s voice, grinning.

“Go on,” he says. “We’ll be fine. We’ll even watch your shit for you, right Mako?”

“Um,” she tilts her head, eyebrows scrunching together, as if not entirely sure what Chuck has said, “yes?”

The reaction is so adorable that Raleigh can’t help but let out a strained chuckle.

“Don’t worry, mate,” Chuck assures him, shooing him away. “Mako, Max, ‘n I can handle it.”

Raleigh looks at where Max is sleeping on top of Chuck’s boots and very much doubts the bulldog puppy is going to be guarding anything, but rolls his eyes good naturedly and heads off to Troller’s office. The closer he gets, though, the more his nervousness from before starts ratcheting up his back, and by the time he reaches the heavy metal door he’s practically quivering with nerves. The door is propped slightly open, but he knocks anyway.

“The door’s open, I should hope that you know how to use it,” comes the acerbic response. When Raleigh enters her closet of an office, Troller gestures to the chair across from her. “Take a seat, Ranger.”

“Sir,” Raleigh begins as soon as he sits, “I’m sorry, sir, I don’t know what I did but I promise I haven’t done anything to Chuck that I can tell, and I don’t think I’ve upset Miss Mori either although I don’t know if she’d tell me even if I did, and—”

Troller’s words catch up to him. He blinks. “Did. Did you just call me—?”

“I did. Now shut up before you embarrass yourself further. And shut the door.”

Raleigh quickly stands and pulls the door shut, perhaps a bit too forcefully, but he thinks he’s allowed this one slip up; the arched eyebrow Troller is giving him tells him not to push his luck, though.

“I’m recommending you to continue to the next stage of the program, Becket,” she says when Raleigh retakes his seat. “Congratulations on being the youngest sorry sack of shit to make it.”

“Sir,” Raleigh breathes, a warm feeling akin to giddiness creeping up in his belly, “thank you, sir.”

Troller just arches her eyebrow again.

“Don’t thank me yet. You still haven’t finished the program. You are, however, officially a ranger as of this moment forward. The next step is drift compatibility trials. If you happen to find a compatible partner and both of you are deemed to be of acceptable merit, you’ll be assigned a Jaeger as soon as we have one for you.” A wolfish smirk creeps onto her face. “That is, of course, if you can prove that you and your partner are better than the half-dozen other ranger pairs who are already awaiting a Jaeger assignment.”

 

 

When Raleigh returns to their table, Chuck and Mako are gone and so are his things. He freaks out for a few seconds until one of the trainees tell him that Chuck and Mako were headed to the Kwoon.

When he finds them, Chuck is slowly walking Mako through one of the hold breaks he and Raleigh have been practicing. Without warning, the smaller girl lets out a cry and breaks the hold Chuck has on her almost effortlessly, spinning him around and pinning his chest to the mat so fast that Raleigh almost can’t see what she did. He whistles, impressed. Mako immediately stands, and Chuck slowly clambers to his feet, rubbing his chest where it’d impacted with the mat, his ears red.

“Right,” he mutters darkly. “That’ll work. Jesus christ. What d’ya want, _Rah_ leigh?”

“I passed,” is all Raleigh says, the grin he’d been hiding jumping onto his face so quickly he thinks he might’ve pulled a muscle in his face.

Mako looks confused and Chuck cheers loudly, though after Chuck murmurs something to her in quick Japanese—how the hell was the kid absorbing it so fast?—Mako’s face breaks into a quiet grin.

“Congratulations, Mister Becket,” she says softly, then shrieks when Chuck pulls her forward and forces her to take part in the tight hug he’s wrapping around Raleigh’s shoulders. Max barks and runs around them in circles, tongue lolling as he wags his little stump of a tail happily.

Once again, Raleigh almost finds himself unable to speak from the feeling of _family_ that’s crashing over him.

“Thanks guys,” he murmurs, squeezing the two thirteen-year-olds in his arms. He can’t help but smile even wider when he feels Mako’s rail-thin arms squeezing him back in response.

“‘Bout bloody time, too,” Chuck eventually says, leaning back and punching Raleigh in his bicep, which, like most of Raleigh’s muscles, has become more defined in the past almost-three months. “Sparring was gettin’ really fuckin’ unfair, the way Troller was bulking you up, mate.”

Raleigh just pulls the redhead back into the hug, laughing.

 

 

Raleigh and the other ranger hopefuls are standing around their Kwoon—the rangers have their own separate one for compatibility trials—when a voice barks out, “Alright ya’ mongrels, let’s get started, eh?”

Raleigh starts as he recognizes the voice, and turns towards the source of the voice to see the one and only Hercules Hansen striding towards them. The other rangers clear a path as Hansen strides into their midst. He stops when he reaches the center of a room, scant feet from where Raleigh is standing. At some unspoken command, the rest of the rangers move back, clearing a space about twenty to thirty feet across around the older pilot. He pulls a folded sheaf of paper out of his pocket, takes a look at it after unfolding it, and raises his eyebrows.

“I see we have some fresh meat today.” He looks up, surveying the room. His eyes stop on Raleigh for a moment, assessing, before moving on, and Raleigh sees him giving the same treatment to the half dozen other new rangers Raleigh recognizes by sight from some of his combat training exercises; he’d fought against at least two of them, personally, though he can’t remember which of them won. After Herc finishes his look around, he nods, seemingly satisfied.

“Not gonna lie, it’s not gonna get any easier from here on out. You’re expected to maintain your own physical conditioning. You’ve all passed your classes, though you’re still expected to keep yourself up to date on the newest information we might get. This is the job of any ranger. If I catch you slacking off, I can assure you that I’ll send you packing home to your mothers. And remember: this is _not_ about winning. This isn’t a bloody brawl, it’s a chance to talk. Got it?” When he gets sounds of assent from them all, he nods himself. “Good. Let’s get started.”

The first day is actually rather boring. Raleigh doesn’t get to spar with anyone in the allotted time, though he does get to watch a good number of matches. Most are over quickly, as the whole point of the process is to determine if you can read your opponent or not; if neither are capable of reading each other, then one will typically triumph over the other on skill or brute strength alone. There were a few pairings that looked promising. Two women—one shorter and with firey red hair that reminded Raleigh of Chuck, the other taller, with darker skin and jet-black hair—fight to a standstill during their first round, their hanbo clashing loudly. Then, the shorter of the two gets the upper hand and takes down the taller one in a maneuver Raleigh doesn’t remember ever learning, but was all fluid, sinuous movement. The taller woman makes a noise of protest when she lands on the mat, but immediately springs back up, hanbo stopping inches from the other woman’s face. 1-1. However, from there it was all downhill. The taller woman apparently taps into some well of skill she’d been holding back, and in less than a minute has managed to finish the round, 1-4. Herc shakes his head, disappointment obvious in the motion, and Raleigh feels the whole room give a collective sigh.

“Pretty impressive, right?” comes a voice from behind Raleigh after the match ends, and he whips around to find another man inches from him. The other man had obviously not anticipated Raleigh’s quick turn, because his face registers shock before he stumbles back a half step and manages to catch himself. The grin on his face, though, never leaves, just looks strained for a moment before returning in blinding force. Raleigh doesn’t comment—the way the guy grins at him tells him he’s used to flashing those dimples at someone and getting his way—instead focusing on what the man had said.

“What do you mean?”

The grin falters, and Raleigh takes a moment to take in the appearance of the man in front of him. About the same height as Raleigh himself—though that’ll probably change when he finishes growing, Raleigh thinks to himself smugly—and about the same build, though maybe ever so slightly more built. His short, sandy-blond hair is swept to the side above a pair of full lips and a strong jawline. What really makes Raleigh stop for another look, though, are the man’s eyes.

They’re just like his mother’s.

A dark, deep gray with a hint of blue in their depths, like the ocean during a storm.

The other man’s mouth is moving, and Raleigh has to shake his head and ask him to repeat himself. The man’s grin turns into a smirk.

“You okay, kid?”

“I’m fine,” Raleigh grits out. “Just, could you repeat yourself, uh…” he trails off, realizing that he doesn’t know the other guy’s name.

The man seems to know what Raleigh’s thinking, answering, “Benham. Yancy Benham. What about you, kid?”

Raleigh nearly chokes on the air in his throat.

“Becket,” he manages to get out. “Raleigh Becket.”

“Right,” the guy— _Yancy_ —continues as if nothing important had just happened. “Well, what I said was, that move that Halley—Meredith Halley, by the way—did. Pretty impressive, am I right?”

Raleigh finds himself nodding.

“Yeah, it was. I mean, I couldn’t even track it, really, but it looked really complicated. Dunno how I’d counter that if I ever went up against her.”

Yancy smiles at him, though there’s a predatory undercurrent to it.

“I could teach you, if you like.”

Raleigh just raises an eyebrow.

“And why would you do that? You barely even know me. _Can_ you even do that?”

“Maybe I just think you’re interesting, baby fish,” Yancy taunts him, and Raleigh groans at the return of his nickname. “And the how is easy: we had the same combat instructor. H’Luz.”

Raleigh has to ask the other man to spell the name several times before he understands what he’s is saying. He pronounces it “ah-che-looz” and it’s not until Yancy laughs and explains that “hache” is the letter “h” in Spanish that Raleigh finally understands.

“ _Anyway_ ,” Yancy—Raleigh’s still trying to wrap his mind around that one, because, really, what are the odds?—continues, “we had the same combat instructor. She’s this Mexican woman who’s really hardcore into hand-to-hand. Taught us all these complicated counters and counters to those counters. Like I said, I could teach you that one, maybe even a few others, and how to beat them.”

Raleigh doesn’t answer, because his brain is choosing now to get hung up on the _Yancy_ thing. Behind him he hears the clack of hanbo as another pair of rangers clashes. Yancy seems to notice, and reaches out a hand to brush against Raleigh’s arm, asking him, “Hey, you okay, baby fish?”

Raleigh snaps back to the present with the touch and nickname, and jerks his arm away.

“I’m fine,” he answers. “It’s just, my older brother had the same name as you.”

Benham—it’s easier to think of him that way—arches an eyebrow at Raleigh.

“Had? What happened to him?”

Raleigh shrugs.

“I wouldn’t know. It was before I was born but…” He trails off, turning back towards the match but taking a step back so Benham doesn’t feel like he’s excluding him. To be honest, though, Raleigh doesn’t even know why he’s talking about this with a man he literally met a few minutes ago.

“I’m pretty sure he died.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments, especially constructive criticism, are always welcome and greatly appreciated.


	4. Preludes and Discussions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yancy slowly integrates himself into Raleigh's life. Raleigh's not entirely sure how this happened.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I'm sorry that this update took so long to get out. I have 19 hours of classes this semester on top of working a job and working in a lab almost full time. (In fact, I have to go back into the lab again today... on a sunday... and I went in yesterday, too... because science waits for no man...) BASICALLY, I'm super busy, so I have about zero time to write. HOWEVER. I have not forgotten this story. I promise. This chapter also doesn't include all the events I wanted it to, but I've moved the two that got cut to the next chapter so that you guys can have this one earlier.
> 
> Unbeta'd as usual, so I apologize for any mistakes. If you find any, be sure to point them out and I'll fix them.

“So, I made another friend today.”

Raleigh says the words carefully, and he hates himself a little bit for feeling like he needs to walk on eggshells around Chuck— _Chuck_ , of all people—but, in the almost-three months that he’s been here, he hasn’t really made any friends except for Chuck and Mako. Maybe it’s the young Australian’s brash attitude and fiery temper—examples of which Raleigh has seen aplenty—or maybe it’s Raleigh’s own insecurities feeding on themselves, but the end of the story is that Raleigh doesn’t know how Chuck will respond to him adding another face to their little family. And that thought scares him a little.

Not, of course, that he was planning on adding Yancy to the little unit he, Mako, Chuck, and Max are forming— _have formed_ , he amends in his head. Nope. No way. Not at all.

Chuck, for his part, barely looks away from his J-Tech textbook (formerly Raleigh’s) and gives a noncommittal grunt.

“Good fer you. D’ya want a cookie or somethin’? ‘Cause, hate t’tell ya, mate, but I left the ‘my friend thinks I’m a jealous cockhead’ sprinkles at home.”

Raleigh blinks at the thirteen year old in front of him—not that anyone who looks at Chuck would think he was any younger than seventeen; until, of course, they got him talking—and just stares, stunned. On Chuck’s right, Mako brings the hand which had been flicking the page’s corner back and forth between her fingers—she doesn’t read English quite as well or nearly as fast as Chuck does yet, though she’s improving at an astonishing rate; Chuck just insists on reading every page twice—up to her mouth to cover the smile forming there. In the instant Raleigh can see it, though, it’s so shyly adorable that he’s, once again, forcibly reminded of Jazmine. The irregularly rhythmic shaking in Mako’s shoulders, however, gives her giggles away.

“Hey, don’t laugh,” he mutters, eyebrows furrowing in mock indignation as he takes a exaggeratedly furious spoonful of his potatoes. “This is a big deal for me. I haven't exactly made any friends before you guys."

Raleigh's eyes widen as the words leave his mouth, brain belatedly noting several things: first, that he's entirely right—he'd never before really found any point in forming lasting friendships, so he simply...hadn’t—and second that he’s never _actually_ said that out loud before. He clamps his own mouth shut as the realization washes over him like a bucket of ice-filled water, teeth clacking together audibly even over the noise in the cafeteria; admittedly, the ranger caf’ is much smaller and a lot less occupied than the usual dining hall (Chuck and Mako had both been given access by virtue of their parents’ positions as a Jaeger pilot and the ‘goddamn Marshall,’ respectively), but there are still plenty of people crammed around the long, steel tables, chatting animatedly, voices bouncing off of the high, corrugated ceiling.

Chuck just snorts at him, not even looking up this time.

“Right, mate. Whatever you say.”

Mako, however, is no longer giggling, and is instead looking at Raleigh with her head slightly cocked to one side, as if he’s a puzzle she’s determined to solve. With a sharp turn of her head, she whispers a few quick phrases in Japanese—Raleigh can still only understand about every third word, so the two have taken to having conversations in the other language either when they don’t want Raleigh to know what they’re talking about or when Chuck’s discovered another idiom that doesn’t translate well and needs to be explained—into Chuck’s ear. The redhead’s eyebrows raise into his hairline as whatever Mako said hits home, and he finally lifts his gaze completely away from the book to look Raleigh in the eye.

“Wait, you’re serious?”

Raleigh just blushes lightly and nods his head, feeling like he’s the thirteen year old and Chuck is the older one of them instead of the other way around. Chuck’s eyes widen.

“Christ, you’re _serious_.”

“Yes, Chuck,” Raleigh grits out through the teeth he’d been unaware he was clenching. “Never really had time before, getting shuttled around from one family to the next every few months.”

The Australian at least has the decency to look slightly contrite, apologizing softly and looking down, before he lifts his eyebrow and smirks.

“I must be a bad influence on you then, eh mate? My natural charm must be rubbin’ off on ya or somethin’. You’re just makin’ friends left and right ‘round here, huh?”

Raleigh and Mako exchange eye rolls, the girl smacking Chuck across the back of the head.

“Ow!” he complains, smirk transforming into a glare; from the sound of impact, Raleigh knows she hadn’t held back. “What was that for?”

“For being a, ah, what is it you say? A wanker?” Raleigh replies, smiling so wide he can feel his lips stretching over his front teeth.

“Mate, never, _ever_ say that again. Sounds all kinds’a  wrong in your stupid American accent.”

Raleigh ignores him and continues.

“Besides, if it really hurt that badly, you’d hit her back. Stop being a baby, Chuckles.”

Mako’s face twists in confusion beside Chuck.

“…Chuckles?” she asks, tone unsure, mouth obviously unfamiliar with the word as she tries to wrap her lips and mind around it.

The glare Chuck sends Raleigh’s way is totally worth it, though.

 

 

“Oi, mate, you never did tell us about your new friend at dinner.”

Raleigh looks up from his scrambled eggs in surprise, eyes falling on Chuck where the redhead is sitting on the other side of the table, alone—Mako is still sleeping; she usually wakes to join them for lunch. Raleigh’s mind goes back to yesterday evening and realizing that, yes, Chuck is absolutely right. They’d gotten so off track—Raleigh almost having Mako convinced before the end of the meal that Chuckles was actually Chuck’s name instead of Charles, though once she figured out his ruse she’d promptly kicked him under the table hard enough to bruise—that they’d all completely forgotten. He shovels another bite of the congealed, yellow mass in his mouth, chews, and swallows before opening his mouth to speak.

“Well, his name—”

An unfamiliar hand claps him on the shoulder before he can get a single word out.

“Baby fish! Here you are! I was hoping I’d get to see you again.”

And, before Raleigh can say a single damn thing, Yancy is there beside him, sliding his tray onto the table beside Raleigh’s and dropping onto the bench so close that Raleigh can feel the other man’s body heat radiating across the scant inches between them. Chuck, for his part, looks unimpressed, and closes the book in front of him before turning his attention to his own food, eyes locked appraisingly onto the older blond. Yancy seems to be willfully ignoring the almost-hostile looks sent his way, instead grabbing his fork and cutting off a piece of gravy-soaked biscuit.

“Hi, uh, Benham,” Raleigh gets out before the other man cuts him off.

“Please, call me Yancy. ‘Benham’ is what people call my dad. And I figured I’d find you here about now. Still living on Troller’s five AM running schedule, huh?”

Yancy shoves the forkful of food he’d been cutting up into his mouth, chewing and looking expectantly at Raleigh.

“I, uh,” he shakes his head, gathering his thoughts, because holy hell why is he suddenly stumbling over his words? “I, yeah. Yeah, still… yeah. Doing that.” A thought occurs to him. “And I’ll call you Yancy if you call me Raleigh instead of that stupid nickname.”

Yancy laughs softly around his mouthful of food, eyes sparkling with mirth.

“Sure thing, Rals. So, who’s your friend?”

“Uh, Yancy,” saying the name still feels strange in his mouth for some reason, “this is Chuck. Chuck Hansen. Chuck, this is Yancy Benham, the guy I was telling you about.”

Yancy laughs again as he attacks his biscuits with fervor. If he takes note of the name similarity between Herc and Chuck, he makes no comment. “Not all bad things, I hope.”

“No, actually,” Chuck murmurs softly, sound just audible in the relative quiet of the morning crowd. “I haven’t heard much of anything about you, yet. Ray here was about to start talking when you sat down, though, honestly mate, I’d rather hear it from you.”

Yancy raises an eyebrow, but chews vigorously at the bite in his mouth before swallowing and nodding.

“Alright then. I met Raleigh here yesterday during trials. We talked some about combat and I offered to teach him some moves, though,” he turns towards Raleigh, “we never did actually make plans for that. Which is actually why I came to find you.”

“Oh.” Raleigh casts his mind back to the previous day, going over the words of their conversation. He can feel his eyes widen as he realizes that, shit, Yancy is right. “Damn. So, uh, when are you free, then?”

Yancy shrugs, grinning cheekily. “What’re you doing after breakfast?”

Raleigh blinks at the other blond once. Twice. Three times in rapid succession. He can practically feel Chuck’s assessing gaze from across the table practically burning a hole in the air between himself and Yancy.

“Uh, I mean, I used to have classes after breakfast before I became a Ranger, but, um, I clearly don’t have those anymore, so,” he trails off, looking over at Chuck and meeting the redhead’s gaze as he shrugs his shoulders. “I dunno, Chuckles. What do you think we should do after breakfast?”

“Don’t call me that,” comes the automatic reply even as Chuck’s face twists in thought. “I mean, if y’ wanna go spar, mate, that’s fine. Hell, I can watch if ya like, keep score or some shit while I study. Up t’ you, though.”

Raleigh nods, and finds himself faced with an unreadable expression on Yancy’s face when he turns back towards the slightly shorter blond. A gentle wave of confusion washes over him, lapping at the edge of his awareness.

“Penny for your thoughts, old man?”

“Oh, nothing, baby fish,” Yancy replies, grinning. “Just wondering why you’re asking Hansen’s kid if it’s okay for you to come out and play.”

Raleigh finds himself blinking at Yancy. Again.

“Uhm. Because he’s my friend?”

“Alright, and what if I said I wanted you all to myself for a bit? Maybe so we can talk as we spar?”

“Then you should ask Chuck if he’s okay with that, since it’s not really my place to speak for him.”

“Oi, I’m right here, arseholes.”

Raleigh laughs at Chuck’s antics, tilting his head in the redhead’s direction.

“So what d’you think, koala cub? Do you mind if I ditch you?”

Chuck fumes at the nickname but shrugs nonetheless.

“Sure, it’s fine, mate. Not like we usually hang out after breakfast anyway, what with you havin’ classes and shit.”

He looks down for a moment before he mumbles, “But, thanks for asking.”

He tilts his head to the side, seemingly in though, before adding a belated, almost affectionate, “Wanker.”

 

 

Raleigh’s legs tremble as he pants heavily, the hanbo in his hands a near-unbearable weight. Across the mat from him, Yancy seems hardly affected—face serene, stance wary; eyes assessing. Raleigh tries to keep his weapon in a low guard, but his arms twitch uncontrollably with fatigue from even that much effort. He takes a slow step to the right, and watches as Yancy does the same.

“Y’know, I gotta say,” Yancy says into the silence, hint of a smile making the corners of his mouth twitch, “you’re holding out a lot better than I expected, kid.”

“M’not a kid,” Raleigh mumbles angrily, regretting in an instant the way his arms lower fractionally at his quiet outburst. Even though he knows it’s the opening Yancy’s been waiting for, he can’t quite recover in time.

The other man is on him in an instant, all serpentine grace and fluid strikes that flow effortlessly from one to the next, the angles seemingly impossible. Raleigh manages to somehow block the first half dozen strikes before he realizes that he was _meant_ to do so, and that his balance has shifted so that now he’s practically falling backwards. All it takes is a small shove from Yancy and Raleigh’s on his ass. Again.

He tries to recover, parrying a slew of incoming attacks as he tries to get his feet under him, but then Yancy is right there in his space, twisting Raleigh’s hanbo out of his hands in a motion that seems far too casual for the distance the wooden pole flies through the air. Raleigh lashes out with a leg, relishing in the surprised grunt he gets from Yancy when his heel collides with the other man’s hip, but then something hard and round is pressed under his chin and something else—a knee probably—is compressing his stomach. He follows the wooden shaft that’s dimpling his neck up to its owner, glaring balefully.

“So, when you said you were gonna teach me this shit,” he gets out between labored breaths, “I sort of pictured you actually _teaching_ me instead of beating my ass repeatedly.”

Yancy laughs then, eyes sparkling as he moves his weapon away and uses it to leverage himself off of the younger blond, noticeably not putting additional weight on the knee he has on Raleigh’s stomach. He offers Raleigh his hand and a smile.

“Needed to see what y’ knew already.”

Raleigh accepts the proffered limb and returns the smile with a grimace.

“Did you really have to ‘see what I knew already’ for almost four hours?”

Yancy hauls him to his feet, but Raleigh overbalances and flails to catch himself from landing on his face. Strong, sure arms wrap themselves around his shoulders and arrest his fall, and he finds himself leaning against Yancy’s chest is mild shock. The older man’s body is firm beneath his grasp where his fingers have tangled themselves—seemingly by instinct—in the material of other blond’s thin gray t-shirt. He can hear the slow _lub-dub_ of Yancy’s heart, can feel the pulse of blood as it passes by under his cheek where his head had apparently collided with Yancy’s shoulder. Raleigh’s breathing is erractic, though whether from surprise or the contact he’s not quite sure; however, he feels it begin to slow almost instantly as he finds himself inexplicably relaxing into the arms around him.

When Yancy finally steps back after an amount of time that, in Raleigh’s mind, is slightly more than friendly, the younger blond has to restrain himself to keep a soft whine from forming in his throat. The older man’s hands remain on his shoulders, though, and Raleigh watches as Yancy ducks his head to peer into Raleigh’s eyes.

“You okay, baby fish?” he asks softly, concern evident despite the smile that’s never really left his face.

“M’fine,” Raligh eventually manages to answer, gaze tracking up to the clock above the door. His eyes widen in near-panic.

“Oh shit,” he just about shouts, pulling out of Yancy’s grip—he does _not_ almost instantly miss the warmth, and the places his body was in contact with the older man do _not_ feel as if they’re burning with a cold fire—and running over to where he’d dumped his stuff against the wall. He meets Yancy’s confused gaze as he tries to get his boots on, hopping on one leg. He gestures towards the clock.

“We have, like, three minutes to get to the main Kwoon, man.”

That sets Yancy into a flurry of motion as well, and the man strides over to his own belongings and shrugs them on with a practiced ease. He’s done before Raleigh manages to get his second boot on.

“Not a word,” Raleigh mutters darkly, finishing with the knot in his laces and getting to his feet to pull on his jacket.

“Wouldn’t dream of it, Rals.”

“It’s _Raleigh_ , old man.”

“Whatever you say, Rals.”

 

 

Chuck is at trials today, which in and of itself is unusual. Even stranger, though, is the fact that the redhead is standing beside his father. And somehow the room hasn’t been enveloped in flames. Yet. Neither of them bat an eyelash when Raleigh and Yancy run in at _exactly_ noon.

Raleigh quickly learns why Chuck’s there, though, when he hands the list of combatants for the day over to Herc and the older man calls his name first.

“Becket and Rodriguez. Front and center. Let’s see what you can do, Becket.”

It’s the second time Hercules Hansen has ever acknowledged Raleigh’s existence, and it’s one of the most intimidating moments of Raleigh’s life. He drags his protesting body towards the center of the Kwoon where everyone else has cleared a space, coming face to face with a Latina woman with dark auburn hair who barely comes up to his shoulders. However, he reminds himself that Chuck—who both smaller and younger than him—is a demon in the Kwoon, and reserves his judgment until the match actually starts. He takes his hanbo from where it’s been placed at the edge of the circle and stalks forward, watching as she does the same. They stop approximately teen feet apart, and Raleigh enters a high guard as he watches her maneuver into a low guard.

“Alright, I think it goes without sayin’ that this _isn’t_ a bloody fight, so don’t put each other in the bloody hospital. Nod if y’ understand.”

Raleigh finds himself nodding without breaking eye contact with Rodriguez, and watches as she does the same.

“Then whenever you’re ready, begin.”

Adrenaline sings through Raleigh’s veins, and he has to restrain the urge to simply leap forward. The ache in his limbs seems to dissipate with the fire coursing through him, and for the first time he understands the phrase Chuck had once levied his direction after taking Raleigh down despite the blond nearly popping the kid’s shoulder out of its socket moment earlier: “adrenaline is the best painkiller, mate. Don’t underestimate someone just ‘cause y’ _think_ they’re down.”

He and Rodriguez circle each other. Once. Twice. That’s when Raleigh gives in to impatience, leaping across the distance between them and bringing his hanbo down in an overhanded swing. Instead of moving, though, the woman simply meets him head on, lifting her weapon to block his strike. The two wooden staves collide with a satisfying _crack_ that travels down Raleigh’s arms, but before he has time to follow up his feet are no longer beneath him and he’s pitched backwards. His back and head make contact with the mat at the same time, and he lets out a surprised _whuf_ of air as his breath is stolen away.

“0-1,” Herc calls. “On your feet, Becket. Again.”

The rest of the match, however, is embarrassingly short. With the beating Yancy had given him earlier and the adrenaline from the first round rapidly fading, Raleigh only manages to score one point against the other ranger. She beats him, 1-4. After that, he has two more matches, the first of which he loses by an embarrassing 0-4 and the second of which he loses by a score of 2-4. He can’t meet Herc’s eyes when the pilot tells him to get off the mat with a steely resignation in his tone, nor can he bear to look at Chuck. He doesn’t even want to know what the younger teen sees in him now.

He finds his way back over to Yancy, who nudges him gently with his shoulder.

“Cheer up, kid. Could’ve been worse. Not like it’s a competition, anyway.”

“I scored three points across three matches,” Raleigh mumbles to his feet over the sound of the next pair engaging each other in a rapid series of wood-on-wood _crack_ s. “That’s pitiful and you know it.”

“Nah,” Yancy murmurs back, placing a hand on Raleigh’s shoulder and rubbing soothingly, “it just means your fighting styles didn’t mesh. Remember, it’s not about winning.”

“I _know_ it’s not about winning,” Raleigh whispers harshly. “It still sucks, though. Chuck was watching.”

“Whoo, kid Hansen? Dude, if you think he was embarrassed or something then you’ve got him all wrong. He looked, I dunno, just happy to watch you fight. Like he was a kid at a baseball game or something.”

Raleigh snorts and is about to retort asking who watches baseball, really, when Herc’s voice called Yancy to the center. He’s paired against a tall, willowy man with the last name Tackett and long, brown hair who moves to the center of the room with an air of calm grace and confidence. When the two of them engage, Raleigh can hardly track their movements. Yancy blocks each of Tackett’s attacks almost effortlessly, riposting with a few of his own, but he’s slowly being driven backward. His heel catches against some unseen ridge in the mat, and he stumbles. Tackett takes advantage of the motion and swings through Yancy’s defenses to stop right above the blond’s ribs. They both freeze.

“0-1,” Herc announces. “Good job. Could be we’ve found  a match for you, yet, Benham.”

 “Could be, sir,” Yancy replies without any mirth, returning to his starting position.

The next time the two men meet, Raleigh realizes just how much Yancy held back in their sparring this morning.

Moving almost faster than Raleigh can track, Yancy surges forward, a blur of limbs and that same serpentine grace Raleigh witnessed earlier, except this time he knows, watching, that he’d have had absolutely no chance to even think about counterattacking if faced with an onslaught like this. Tackett seems to feel the same way, as he desperately tries to backpedal and deflect Yancy’s strikes. However, in a matter of seconds, Yancy scores at least a dozen point-hits on the other man, and it’s over before it even had a chance to begin.

To say Herc looks disappointed would be an understatement. Raleigh is almost sure he hears him muttering something about _not_ making the match into a battle and not taking trials seriously, but the older man dismisses Yancy to the back of the room without overt comment. The blond is grinning wryly when he rejoins Raleigh.

“You’re never gonna find a partner if you don’t dial your moves back, man,” Raleigh admonishes him quietly once the next pair has engaged each other.

“But then they wouldn’t be matching themselves with _me_ ,” Yancy mutters back. “Just a slower, weaker version of me. And that’s not,” he waves his hands in front of him as if he’s trying to demonstrate his point, “it’s not me, y’know?”

His eyes go slightly veiled as he adds, almost too softly for Raleigh to hear, “I’ve waited a year, I’ll wait another if I have to.”

Raleigh’s mind practically whirls at the words, and he turns his head to Yancy to ask how the hell _that’s_ working out, but when he catches sight of the way Yancy’s expression has become decidedly downcast—how the corners of his mouth have turned down slightly, and how his eyes have lost their usual (at least, Raleigh’s come to think of it as ‘usual’ in the past few hours) shine—he decides to keep his mouth shut.

They don’t talk about it. At least, not that day.

 

 

“Becket.”

Herc’s voice surprises Raleigh as in the middle of heading for the door after trials are concluded for the day, Yancy on one side, Chuck on the other. He’s still surprised that Chuck hasn’t said anything to him about Yancy, considering Chuck’s track record when it came to people other than Raleigh or Mako—not that he’s complaining, of course. Raleigh turns back to face the older man, straightening his spine slightly.

“Yes sir?” he asks, trying to keep his tone respectful and mask the weariness that’s taken up residence in his bones ever since his adrenaline rush from earlier fled.

“A word, please. Alone.”

Raleigh casts quick glances at Yancy and Chuck each before nodding. “Of course, sir.”

Herc hasn’t moved from his spot at the head of the Kwoon, and he glances meaningfully at the door behind Raleigh. The ranger quickly moves to shut the door, feeling a sense of dread fill him the moment the heavy metal settles against the frame. Though the doors are by no means soundproof, they can, at the very least, muffle anything above an outright shout. Once done, Raleigh turns back around, coming to attention.

“At ease, ranger,” the pilot tells him, finally breaking his rigid posture to slum forward slightly as he takes  a few tentative steps in Raleigh’s direction. “I wanted to talk t’you ‘bout Chuck. And the friendship you have with him.”

“Sir,” Raleigh starts, “I can promise you I have no intention of—”

“I know well enough what your intentions are, ranger,” Herc interrupts him, tone mild, mouth quirking slightly at the corner. “If you didn’ have the kid’s best interests at heart, well, let’s just say that I’d know by now, eh?”

And that’s when the pilot does something that surprises Raleigh—well, surprises him more than the fact that he’s talking to _Hercules fucking Hansen_ in the first place. Herc _blushes_ and lifts a hand to rub at the back of his neck. Like he’s _nervous_. Like _Raleigh_ , a seventeen year old kid, makes a man who could probably kill him in twenty different ways in less time than it would take Raleigh to scream nervous. It’s preposterous.

“Look, I’m sure y’know me ‘n my son don’t have the best relationship,” Herc says softly, not meeting Raleigh’s gaze. “T’be honest, it’s mostly my fault. I haven’t been the best father to ‘im that I could be. But, in the past few months, Chuck’s seemed, well, ‘e’s seemed happier than he has since,” the older man’s mouth twists as he pauses, mouth moving as if he’s trying to force the words out, “ever since Angela died. I dun’ pretend to know exactly what you are to him, or what he is to you, but thank you, I suppose, for bein’ there for the tyke when I can’t be.”

Raleigh doesn’t relax an inch. There’s got to be a catch here somewhere, he’s sure of it. He is, therefore, not surprised when Herc’s face hardens and the older man lifts his gaze to stare Raleigh in the eye again.

“But make no mistake, ranger. That doesn’t mean I’ll let you continue slacking off like today. That, today? That was a disgrace. I expected better from you. ‘Manda spoke so highly of you, too. I’d hate to have to tell her that she was wrong.”

Raleigh feels shame well up in his gut. However, he imagines that the older man would care little for the excuse of ‘I was sparring with my new friend until I almost literally collapsed from exhaustion,’ so he keeps his mouth shut.

“You will do better, am I understood, _baby fish_?”

Raleigh cringes inwardly at the mocking emphasis placed on his nickname, face reddening, but he still nods sharply. “Yes, sir.”

“Good. Get out.”

When Raleigh arrives in the hallway, he finds Yancy and Chuck both waiting for him, twin expressions of concern on their faces.

“So what did m’old man want, eh?” Chuck asks, breaking the silence once Raleigh slams the door shut behind himself.

“He, uh, he criticized me on my performance today,” Raleigh answers sheepishly, rubbing the back of his neck in a motion similar to what Chuck’s father had done a few minutes earlier. However, there’s something warm in his gut now, and he draws on that feeling and turns towards Yancy, answering the older man’s worry with his own steely resolve.

“I want you to teach me to fight. Not like earlier,” Raleigh interrupts Yancy when the taller blond opens his mouth to speak, no doubt about to say that he’s of course going to teach Raleigh to fight and has already started, “but like you fought today. No holding back. Either I’ll adapt and one day I’ll be the one putting you on your ass regularly,  or I won’t and you’ll always regret the time you wasted training a waste of space like me.”

Yancy’s face contorts with something unrecognizable—probably, Raleigh muses, with the matter-of-fact way he’d said all that—but he still puts an arm around Raleigh’s shoulder and ruffles his hair in a move holding more affection that Raleigh’s received in probably the past two years put together.

“You’re not a waste of space, kid. And I don’t think I’ll regret it one way or the other. But, if you think you can handle it, then fine. The real training starts tomorrow after breakfast. Deal?”

Raleigh throws Yancy’s arm off of him, smiling to convey that he’s not actually upset.

“Deal.”

 

 

Raleigh’s feet are pounding into the track on his morning run, blood pounding in his ears in a staccato that keeps his time for him as his breath labors in and out of his lungs, when he suddenly becomes aware of another set of footfalls directly behind him. He twists his upper body slightly to look back, losing his rhythm for a moment, and comes face to face with Yancy. He raises an eyebrow at the older man, turning to face forward again, and calls over his shoulder, “It’s only been a week. You’re already monitoring my runs, too?”

It’s been a very eventful week, though. Yancy had taught Raleigh a series of maneuvers that had at first made Raleigh scoff at the ridiculousness of them. Then Yancy had put Raleigh on his ass—not surprising, but still—using those exact moves. Afterwards, he’d taught Raleigh the situations in which to use them, then, as an added bonus, how to counter them if he ever went up against one of Yancy’s classmates.

And then they’d done it all over again, but with a different set of moves. And then again. And again. And again. Chuck and Mako had taken to watching them spar, conversing in a mixture of Japanese and English and placing bets on how many moves it would take Raleigh to get knocked on his ass. Now, a week later, Raleigh was no closer to beating Yancy, and he still arrived to trials feeling so tired that he could never muster more than an obligatory effort whenever his name was called.

There had been one woman—an energetic brunet from Ireland who’d smiled so much it made Raleigh’s face hurt in sympathy—with whom he’d felt some sort of connection; their fight had gone better than any of Raleigh’s others: he’d lost 4-2, scoring two points at the very end, and for a moment he’d been both elated and terrified that he’d found someone else who was drift compatible. However, the look on Herc’s face after the girl had scored her last point had made it clear that getting a score that was _closer_ to even was not a basis for drift compatibility; after all, the candidates were supposed to, ideally, trade off on getting points and, in a perfect world, come to a stalemate and tie. Yancy, though, had congratulated him when he’d described the feeling earlier of being almost able to read the woman’s movements before she made them, saying that when he found someone with true drift compatibility it wouldn’t be a ‘with vary results’ sort of thing.

Presently, Yancy laughs at him.

“Nah, just figured you could use some company. The track is lonely this time of day.”

Raleigh looks around, taking in the three other runners on the track aside from the two of them, and raises an eyebrow.

“And it never occurred to you that I like it that way?”

Yancy looks legitimately worried for a moment, face paling comically, and then Raleigh lets out the laugh he’s been holding back. The older man looks at him, face red, clearly affronted.

“That was mean, man.”

Raleigh just laughs louder, having to slow his pace as his sides start to ache from how forcefully the sound is ripping itself from his chest.

“You should’ve, you should’ve seen your _face_ , Yance. Priceless.”

And then he hiccups. Loudly. So hard that it’s like a full-body spasm, almost landing  him on his face. He manages to catch himself just before he _actually_ falls over, but it’s a near thing. Yancy side-eyes him, the dimples Raleigh spotted for the first time two days ago flashing his way.

“You deserve that, brat.”

“Hey, fu— _hic_ —god damn it, fuck you!”

Yancy just laughs harder as Raleigh continues hiccupping, the two of them eventually settling into a companionable silence broken only by the sounds of their feet on the rubberized track and their breathing. Raleigh occasionally lets out a hiccup-groan, but the time interval between them in increasing—a fact for which he’s extremely grateful, since it throws off his breathing and it _hurts_.

“So...” Yancy starts hesitantly, his tone making Raleigh look away from the ground in front of his feet to focus instead on the older man’s face. He’s pointedly looking ahead, not looking at the teenager beside him. “I know we’ve only known each other for just over a week, but there’s something I’ve been wanting to ask you about.”

“Alright,” Raleigh replies just as hesitantly, mind racing as he wonders where exactly this could be going. In their week-and-a-day friendship, the two of them haven’t exactly made time to, well, _talk_ yet. Of course there have been questions burning to pass Raleigh’s lips—for example, why the hell has Yancy been in the ranger program for a _year_?—but he’d written them off as too personal to ask after so short a time.

“You haven’t talked about your family and you get really, uhm, distant I suppose? Whenever I mention mine. Why is that?”

Raleigh shrugs lightly before it occurs to him that this is exactly what the older man means, so he inclines his head in Yancy’s direction in a motion he hopes the other man will accurately interpret as assent as he tries to find the words to answer. He stays silent for another lap around the track, though, allowing the rhythm of their feet striking the ground to keep his thoughts ordered. Yancy waits silently, though, not offering an apology for possibly overstepping his bounds, but not pushing the matter, either. Finally, when they pass the door they came in through a second time since Yancy asked his question, Raleigh speaks up.

“As far as I know, they’re all dead.”

He looks down, pulling his lower lip into his mouth and teething at it gently. He can hear the man beside him draw in an overly-protracted breath through his nose, a sound Raleigh interprets—truthfully or not, he doesn’t know—as the running equivalent of a sharp, surprised inhalation.

“My mom and sister both died of cancer. Not in that order, though. My sister died when she was nine, and I was twelve. Brain tumor. My mom, hers was lung cancer. I was fifteen.”

He bites down harshly on the lip in his mouth until he tastes copper.

“My dad left after my mom died. Just packed up his stuff and left me alone in the house. I don’t know where he is. I don’t really care. I just assume he’s dead. It’s easier that way.”

Silence falls over them again. Raleigh’s lungs are protesting slightly from speaking without maintaining his breathing properly, and he has to take a few especially deep breaths to get himself back on track. After a minute more of silence, Yancy speaks up again.

“When we first met, you mentioned a brother. What happened to him?”

Raleigh had been expecting the usual onslaught of ‘I’m sorry’ and ‘That sucks, man,’ and the lack of an apology—sympathetic or otherwise—felt...nice, in a way. As if the older man was acknowledging his past for what it was: his _past_ , and where he wanted it kept. Sure, it was shitty, but it wasn’t like it defined his whole existence.

“I don’t know,” Raleigh answers after a moment’s deliberation. “Actually, growing up, I didn’t even know he existed. It was always just me and Jaz.”

The sharp turn of Yancy’s head is the only confirmation Raleigh needs of the taller man’s confusion, so he answers the unasked question.

“My mom, when she was dying, started talking to him—to Yancy—and, eventually, Jaz too. Y’know, the whole ‘dying people talk to the dead’ stuff? Anyway, yeah, she just kept apologizing, saying she was sorry, that she and my dad weren’t ready for him, that it wasn’t his fault, it was theirs. I dunno. It didn’t make much sense. Before he left, I asked my dad about it, but he didn’t answer. Looking back on it, it probably dragged up a bunch of shit for him. Either way, I spent the next year or so thinking about it, and, best I can figure, my parents tried to have a kid before me, but he didn’t make it. Or something.”

“Gotcha.”

They continue running, the only sound between them their breathing and a companionable silence. Raleigh feels somehow lighter for having told his story to someone at last. Sure, he’d told some people parts of everything, but never all of it: no one had ever really cared beyond him saying ‘they’re all dead.’ That was about when everyone checked out and started slathering apologies all over him like syrup.

“Wanna hit the showers, then?” Yancy asks after they complete three more laps, and it’s then that Raleigh realizes that it’s half past seven already and almost time to get breakfast. He finds himself reveling in the fact that his new friend isn’t making a big deal out of this, because, honestly, that’s all he’s ever wanted when it comes to his story: someone who just... seems to get it. And Yancy does. Somehow, he seems to just _get_ that this  isn’t something Raleigh enjoys talking  about, so his recounting is just about all the speaking Raleigh cares to do on the matter. Maybe he has a similar story, or maybe he’s just perceptive. Raleigh doesn’t know, and he doesn’t, ultimately, care: the only thing that really matters is that, for whatever reason, his friend isn’t making this into a huge deal. He turns to Yancy and makes a sweeping gesture with his arm towards the door to the hallway as they approach it, beckoning Yancy forward.

“Sure, man. You go first. Age before beauty.”

The laugh he gets in return is enough to reassure Raleigh that, yes, they’re alright. It’s not stilted. It’s not awkward.

It’s exactly what he needs.

 

 

After that morning, Yancy starts joining him for his morning run on a regular basis. Another three days later, he starts joining Raleigh for his regular workouts, as well.

They talk.

It’s still not awkward.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments, especially constructive criticism, are always welcome and will result in the author potentially giving away cookies shaped like little bulldogs. (if the author baked, that is)


	5. A Rhythm Interrupted

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things start to settle down. Obviously, this is when they have to be shaken up again. Because Raleigh's life can't be simple.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I HAVE A BETA! WOO!
> 
> Sorry for the wait, guys. I had another [Pacific Rim fic](/works/1155761) I had to get out of my system, first.
> 
> There may or may not be a bit of a surprise in this one ~~it surprised even me~~
> 
> Beta Credit: [Airwing](/users/Airwing)

For the next two weeks, Raleigh’s life settles into a new rhythm. Wake up. Run with Yancy. Shower. Breakfast, joined by Chuck and—when she manages to wake up on time, as she has a bad tendency to sleep in—Mako. Sparring with Yancy while Chuck and Mako watch and make commentary (Mako is slowly getting bolder with hers) and bets. Compatibility trials under Herc’s watchful eye. Lunch. Working out with Yancy and, sometimes, Chuck, though the teen has a tendency to be overzealous with his weights despite both Raleigh and Yancy arguing that he isn’t ready yet. Shower again. Dinner. Studying or sparring with Chuck, with Yancy and Mako occasionally joining in as well. Finally, if Raleigh still has too much energy coursing through his veins, he’ll go on another run to burn off steam. When all that’s done, he’ll drop into bed, the ache of exhaustion settling into his bones like a fond memory, sleep until five, and do it all over again.

Slowly, things are changing.

Yancy and Chuck have slowly, _very_ slowly, started becoming friends. Or, at the very least, they act like friends in front of Raleigh. The blond doesn’t know what they get up to when he’s not around, but, given that he’s around either Chuck or Yancy for most of the day, he’s reasonably confident that they don’t secretly hate each other behind his back. Chuck still holds the older man at arm’s length, though, and if he has a more personal sort of problem,  he usually seeks out Raleigh when Yancy isn’t around. The most recent of these episodes had been two days ago, when Chuck had found a skin mag laying around the tech room and hadn’t known what to do with it. The resulting talk (“What the fuck mate, naked people? Who even looks at this trash? I don’t want my old man thinkin’ it’s mine or anythin’, shit, you gotta help me get rid of it.” “Then why the hell did you _pick it up_ , Chuck? Wait, Chuck, is that a ga—” “ _Shut up and help me get rid of it, you useless piece of shite_.”) had been interesting, to say the least.

Yancy, for his part, seems perfectly content to give Chuck his space, silently acknowledging the bond Raleigh and Chuck have formed in the several months before he was around with his distance. Of course, that isn’t to say that the two avoid each other. They gang up on Raleigh all the time during sparring, though more often than not it’s Yancy interceding on Chuck’s behalf. And, more than once, Raleigh has caught the two of them watching drift simulator recordings, heads bowed together so that they can discuss some point one of them had raised.

Yancy and Mako, meanwhile, have become fast friends. _Very_ fast. Apparently, Yancy’s family—he still only mentions them in passing, always without details—has several Japanese immigrant families in their neighborhood, and they’d all learned Japanese in an effort to help them acclimate to a new environment. According to Yancy, it’d been a sort of family bonding experience. Regardless, he and Mako will have fast, precise conversations in Japanese while Yancy and Raleigh are sparring; Raleigh’s almost ninety percent sure Yancy is making fun of him while the young girl listens in, as, more often than not, she’ll giggle at whatever he says and her eyes will track to Raleigh and back. Chuck will occasionally chime in, his Japanese apparently passable enough that he can follow along, eyes glittering mischievously in Raleigh’s direction; the brat _knows_ he’s still learning.

However, perhaps the most telling moment of Yancy’s slow, but certain, integration into the little family they’d been making is one of the evenings that Raleigh feels like ants are crawling under his skin and he decides to go on a run. He alternates his pace around the track, sprinting for a lap, then jogging for three to give himself time to cool down somewhat, then sprinting again. It does wonders to clear his head, and after one of the sprinting laps he decides he’s had enough, slows to a jog for one more lap, then walks a final lap. The hallways between the track and his barracks are overcrowded for some reason—he honestly has no idea why so many people seem to have _somewhere_ to go at this time of night—and he decides to take a shortcut and ducks into the classroom corridors. Once there, he relishes in the darkened passages, the lack of light a cooling balm on both his retinas and his skin. However, over the sound of his own footsteps and his still-slowing heartbeat, he hears voices. Normally, this would be enough to pique his interest, but specifically he hears _Yancy’s_ voice, in addition to what sounds like Mako. He follows the echoes until he comes to a partially open door, and the sight that greets him when he peeks through almost makes him want to laugh at how god damned _cute_ it is.

Yancy and Chuck are sitting on either side of Mako, a J-Tech book open on the desk in front of the three of them. The three of them are all reading aloud in English, and, whenever Mako gets that adorably scrunched up look of confusion on her face (Raleigh swears she must’ve somehow picked it up from Jazmine, but then he remembers that such a thing is impossible given that the two never had a chance to meet), either Yancy or Chuck will translate it into Japanese. After a few minutes of watching them work through several pages, it becomes apparent that Yancy is using this as both an exercise to improve Mako’s English and Chuck’s Japanese, as he’ll coach Chuck through translating seemingly more difficult passages.

The sight is just so _domestic_ that Raleigh feels, not for the first time, though this time is certainly the strongest the feeling has ever been, like they’re a _family_. A real family who maybe doesn’t completely trust each other yet, but who are trying, every day, to get better, and to build new bridges of trust. The thought fills him with equal parts elation and longing.

It doesn’t occur to Raleigh until he’s back in his bunk, drifting off to sleep, that this is the happiest he’s been in almost seven years. Somehow, the thought fails to surprise him.

 

 

One day, when he and Yancy are finishing up their morning run, Chuck intercepts them outside the track. More specifically, he intercepts Raleigh.

“Oi, Ray,” he calls. “Need t’ talk to ya.”

Raleigh raises an eyebrow at the summons, glancing back over at Yancy for confirmation in a gesture that’s become surprisingly familiar. The older blond simply cocks an eyebrow of his own, shrugging and nodding in Chuck’s direction as if to say, “Go ahead, he didn’t ask for me so it’s probably none of my business.” Raleigh can almost imagine him saying it in that disgustingly understanding tone Yancy gets any time someone thinks they might be upsetting him.

“Go on, baby fish,” Yancy says aloud when Raleigh hesitates, clapping the younger blond on the shoulder. “I’ll catch up with you later. Training later, yeah?”

“Yeah, sure,” Raleigh replies, trying to ignore the warmth that spreads across his back and chest from where Yancy’s hand had made contact. “Later.”

That’s another thing that’s been happening with increasing regularity, and, unlike the feelings of family, these feelings legitimately terrify Raleigh. He hadn’t had much time to figure much of, well, anything out about himself before he’d been dumped in the foster system; too much time spent worrying about his fracturing home and dying mother. Afterwards, though, when Raleigh had finally had time to stop and breathe and _feel_ for the first time in years, he found the words of his first foster parents, to ‘just relax, find a nice girl, and enjoy life’ while he could, to ring hollow for some reason. It wasn’t until one of the juniors on his lacrosse team, another thing his new family-but-not-really had suggested, had cornered him after practice and confessed that he’d wanted to kiss Raleigh for weeks that he managed to put a reason behind that feeling.

Raleigh didn’t want to find a nice girl.

He and Jason—that’d been the junior’s name—had repeated the exercise. Several times. Or, more accurately, as often as possible. Raleigh had taken personal gratification from the spot he’d discovered just behind the other teen’s left ear that’d made him moan obscenely and scream the blond’s name. Then, Less than a week after they’d kissed for the first time ,Raleigh had been transferred to another home.

He hasn’t done anything since then. With anyone. Sure, the thought has crossed his mind, but he’s always been able to successfully tamper the feelings down and focus on the task at hand.

Until Yancy. Yancy with his damned name that made Raleigh do a double-take every time he heard it, and his cocky grin, and his fluid grace in combat, and his fucking dimples when he smiles—hell, just the way he _smiles_ , mouth quirked at the corner, eyes shining with warmth, dimples just _begging_ to come out but restrained until the man actually, fully, smiles. And, when he does, it’s a breathtaking sight to behold.

“Oi, loverboy,” Chuck snaps his fingers in front of Raleigh’s face, and Raleigh starts from where he’d been staring down the hallway. “Come on, mate. We need to talk.”

“What? I—I’m not,” Raleigh starts, before realizing that Chuck hasn’t acknowledged a word he’s saying and has continued down the hallway as if he expects to be followed. Raleigh sighs dramatically and rolls his eyes at the redhead’s back, plodding after the Australian’s retreating form. A curl of surprise wedges itself into Raleigh’s gut when they pass several unused classrooms—their usual spot for a ‘talk’—and the cafeteria, as well as several practice kwoons without occupants. When Chuck takes a left down a hallway Raleigh’s never been through before, he obligingly follows, any questions he asks Chuck while they walk bouncing off the redhead like raindrops on a windowpane. It only takes him a moment, however, to identify exactly where they are, provided that the nameplates hung beside the doors are accurate.

“Chuck, why the hell are we in the officers’ wing?”

“Because it’s where my old man n’ I are stayin’, obviously,” Chuck fires back without turning around.

“Right,” Raleigh mutters sarcastically to himself, looking around fervently in the hopes that no one spots him here. Though it’s not _technically_ a rule, it’s considered an unspoken regulation that only officers, instructors, and their families are allowed in this area of the Academy. “Of course. Why didn’t I guess that? It’s so obvio—”

Raleigh cuts himself off as he nearly runs into Chuck, the younger teen fiddling with the code lock. It flashes red at him and he swears at it, punching in a series of numbers again before it lights up green and he twists the knob.

“Stupid thing,” he gripes, pushing the heavy door open until it collides with the wall with a muted _bang_ of metal on metal. “Always says I get it wrong the first time when I know fucking well I don’t. Piece of shit.”

Chuck steps into the room, still muttering darkly to himself, but looks back after a few seconds when he apparently realizes Raleigh hasn’t followed him in. Raleigh, for his part, is still standing at the edge of the doorframe, indecision warring within him. Technically speaking, these are Herc’s quarters. Raleigh can see the older man’s dress uniform hanging on a rack against the far wall, reminding him that Chuck just so happens to share the room because he’s family. Though Raleigh has come to think of Chuck as a close friend in these past few months—hell, he thinks of Chuck as the little brother he never had—he can’t say the same for the kid’s father. Herc has barely spoken to Raleigh outside of the kwoon, and, even then, the man maintains a strictly professional attitude and distance. Therefore, Raleigh feels just the tiniest bit apprehensive (and by tiniest bit apprehensive, he of course means very _really fucking nervous_ ) about invading the man’s personal quarters, friend of Chuck’s—with the man’s blessing, to boot—or no.

“Oh, come on, idiot,” Chuck mutters at him, eyes drifting towards the ceiling. “Not like it’s gonna bite ya or anythin’. ‘S just my room.”

“And your dad’s,” Raleigh whispers under his breath, but judging by the snort Chuck sends his way he was heard anyway.

“Just shut the door behind you,” Chuck tells him, looking back at Raleigh for a moment before turning around again and stalking towards the bed further from the door.

Raleigh swallows back the uncertainty bubbling at the back of his throat and steps over the threshold, pulling the door closed as ordered. Once it shuts with an ominously final sound, Raleigh looks around and really takes stock of the room. It’s been divided into two halves almost down the middle, with the in-suite bathroom located in the far wall. It does not escape Raleigh’s attention that this is clearly Chuck’s half.

Chuck’s half of the room is almost the polar opposite of Herc’s. Herc has kept his space tidy and neat, each object, of which there are not many, obviously finding its own home and staying there until needed. The covers on the bed are made with Spartan precision, and the only personal touch visible is the Lucky Seven vest hanging over the back of the desk chair. By contrast, Chuck’s half is covered in discarded civilian clothes and sheets of paper on which Raleigh spots quickly-scrawled notes and Japanese characters from various and sundry study sessions. Posters of several Jaegers—Cherno Alpha, Romeo Blue, and, to Raleigh’s great amusement, Tacit Ronin—cover the walls, displaying stats, kill counts, and pilots posed in their drivesuits. Chuck makes his way over to the bed, pushes the unmade covers flat, and sits on the edge, turning to look pointedly at Raleigh. The blond shifts uncomfortably under his stare.

“Well, come on,” Chuck finally mutters, exasperation clear. “Sit, mate. We need t’ talk.”

Raleigh moves towards the bed, sitting on the rumpled forest-green comforter that, a part of his mind notes, is in no way regulation. He perches on the edge of the mattress carefully, keeping his eyes on Chuck. Once seated, he tilts his head at Chuck questioningly. “About what?”

“About Yancy.”

The words are matter-of-fact. Raleigh can’t figure out whether Chuck is upset or not; for once, the Australian isn’t wearing his heart on his sleeve (and even when he isn’t Raleigh can usually read him anyway), and the sudden other-ness of Chuck’s attitude sends tension ratcheting down his spine. Chuck must notice—he always does, the asshole—because he rolls his eyes and sighs exasperatedly.

“Oh my god, y’ idiot, I’m not angry or anythin’. I just want to _talk_. Fuck, aren’t friends supposed to do that shit or something?”

Raleigh blinks, Chuck’s words slowly penetrating. His body deflates as soon as they do, though, and he lets out a breath that had become trapped in the back of his throat. Despite the tension from a moment ago, he can’t help the snark that works its way into his words, a fitting rejoinder for the worry Chuck just put him through.

“Well then why the secrecy, oh bestest friend of mine?”

Chuck just blinks at him, level stare telling Raleigh just how much of an idiot he thinks the blond is being.

“Because I’m not gonna bloody well talk about Yancy in front of him. More like,” he adds quickly before Raleigh can interject, “I’m not gonna embarrass you in front of him unless you start it yourself.”

It’s Raleigh's turn to blink in surprise.

“Embarrass me? What makes you think you could embarrass me?”

“Oh, I dunno, mate. Probably could do it pretty easy, actually. Just have to yell that you wanna bang your new friend ten different ways to Sunday and back in the middle of the canteen, yeah? Oughta do it, I think.”

Raleigh nearly gags on his own spit. He can feel his face heating, imagines he must be _beet_ red right now, and he nearly falls off the bed when one of his legs decides that it would rather not support someone so easily caught off guard. He turns back towards Chuck once he manages to stabilize himself again, fully intending to deny the redhead’s accusations. The flat, unimpressed look Chuck gives him, though, stops the words in his throat. Instead, he lifts an arm and rubs the back of his neck sheepishly.

“Yeah, so?” he mumbles, trying to will the color away from his face.

“So nothing,” the younger teen responds, shifting forward slightly on the bed until his face is less than two feet from Raleigh’s own. The blond leans back slightly out of pure reflex before he checks the motion. “I honestly don’t give a shit who y’wanna screw, mate. I just don’t want ya’ t’get hurt, is all.”

Chuck is silent for a moment before he adds, “Also, if he _does_ hurt you? I like the bastard well enough, but it won’t stop me from making his insides his outsides.”

When Raleigh laughs nervously, Chuck’s expression doesn’t change.

 

 

The first time Raleigh manages to tie with Yancy, he writes it off as a fluke.

He’s been getting steadily better for a few weeks, now. For the most part, he’s been able to score one or two hits against the older man during their practice sessions, but he’s yet to get further than two in a given match. Yancy, of course, still has a host of tricks up his sleeve that he hasn’t shared yet, but he’s shared enough that Raleigh can at least have a few of his own stashed away.

However, the real trick of the training, Yancy had told him after a week, was not in the moves themselves, but in learning _how_ to fight. Yancy moved fast because he _was_ fast—there was no way to reliably teach someone to move faster except to have them practice and become more comfortable with the set of moves they knew—but that didn’t make him _better_ by any means. He’s teaching Raleigh how to read through an opponent’s speed, to _feel_ what they’re going to do next based on the ebb and flow of their violent dance instead of just trying to _see_ it.

“I mean,” he’d told Raleigh one day when the teen had complained that there was no way he could _possibly_ block all of those strikes _,_ “it’s not like I can magically see other people who move as fast as I do. My brain doesn’t move any faster than yours, just my body. I still have to rely on my reflexes and instinct to make sure I don’t get hit. You just need to learn to do the same.”

In the following weeks, Raleigh had tried in vain to understand what the older man had meant. Each time, though, he simply felt like he’d let his guard down for no good reason and, accordingly, gotten his ass handed to him. He’d grumbled a soft series of expletives as he stood back up, preparing to try again, while Chuck had jeered him and Mako had offered a shy, sympathetic smile. However, one Saturday, something had clicked in his brain. If asked, Raleigh wouldn’t have been able to say what it was. All he knew was that, suddenly, he could get a rough bead on what Yancy was planning to do next. The tells were all things he’d seen all along, but never bothered to put together: the way the man crouched in anticipation, the way his hands shifted almost imperceptibly one way or another just before he lashed out, or the way his head tilted minutely in the middle of a strike, scanning Raleigh’s defenses for a gap in order to place his next attack.

There were dozens of other things, and, again, if asked, Raleigh would’ve been unable to say how he knew what they were. In the end, though, Yancy now had to work for his points, though Raleigh still hadn’t fully mastered the attacks and counterattacks and counter-counterattacks Yancy’d been trying to drill into his skull.

His drift compatibility session the following Monday had been something to see. While he still lost most of his matches by a wide margin, he didn’t go down easily. Herc’s raised eyebrows spoke volumes about his improvement. Yancy, of course, disappointed yet again when he took down the three opponents the pilot had lined up for him in near-record time.

So it comes as a surprise to all assembled when, just three days later, on a Thursday, Raleigh manages to lose to Yancy 3-4. Nothing had _seemed_ too different during the bout; Raleigh had simply executed the moves he’d been learning a little faster than usual, muscle memory taking over when he focused on the next step.

Obviously, he thinks to himself, it’d been a fluke.

“Ten dollars, please,” Mako says quietly to Chuck in the ensuing silence, clearly having won their bet for the day. Chuck grumbles something decidedly unkind about Raleigh—the blond thinks he catches the phrases “cheating” and “ass-waggling,” but elects to ignore it as Chuck being a sore loser—but hands over the money anyway. The stuff is practically useless in the academy itself, but it’s the only thing most of them have to trade.

“Hnnh,” Yancy grunts at him, grin gripping a corner of the older man’s mouth as he settles into a ready stance once again, sweat an almost unnoticeable sheen on the older man’s forehead. “Alright then. Let’s try that again.”

This time, when he strikes out at Raleigh, the motion carries a different sense of caution that previously hadn’t been there. Raleigh, some part of his mind registering the change in pace before he can consciously dwell on it, moves his hanbo in one of the counters Yancy has managed to imprint on his brain. Before the sound of their staves striking has fully echoed throughout the room, Raleigh shifts his balance and lashes out with the butt end of his weapon, Yancy catching the motion easily and hooking his own weapon in a sliding, hooking motion that’s clearly meant to rip the younger ranger’s staff from his hands. Raleigh has no idea how he knows what Yancy’s intent is—after all, he’s never seen the older man use that particular tactic before—but he suddenly just _knows_ what to do. Before he can analyze anything too far, he’s sliding to the left and flicking the opposite end of his weapon under Yancy’s and is tugging, body acting on some sort of base instinct he hadn’t even realized he’d had. Yancy smirks and releases the side of his hanbo on which Raleigh is pulling, though, and instead lets the momentum of the younger ranger’s attack drive his own weapon towards Raleigh’s unprotected ribs. Except, before Yancy can score a point, Raleigh has already disengaged and is dancing back, his own hanbo slapping Yancy’s strike aside before sliding into another attack.

They continue like this, constant give and take, trying to disarm each other or score a point, for what feels like forever. Raleigh is panting despite the added conditioning Yancy’s been pounding into his frame these past weeks, though the older man isn’t looking much better. The cocksure grin on his face has faded into a frown of concentration as he tries—and repeatedly fails—to find an opening, only to have to fall back beneath a succession of ripostes from Raleigh.

The teen doesn’t entirely understand what’s happening. It’s like, all of a sudden, moreso than before, something’s _clicked_ in his head and he can spot, no, more like _feel_ , the openings in Yancy’s ever-shifting defenses and try to worm his way in. Then, he just _knows_ how Yancy is going to react, and can respond accordingly, his body becoming something detached and running on instinct that moves without his consent but that responds to the seemingly unimportant observations he makes. Yancy had once described this feeling to him when he’d talked about his fighting style, calling it a “self-drift,” where the mind and body are suddenly behaving separately but operating in a cohesive manner that would have previously been thought impossible.

Eventually, Raleigh does make a mistake, and lands incorrectly on his right foot after hopping in that direction to try and find an opening. The joint rolls under his weight, and Raleigh lets out a cry of pain as he goes down. The sound echoes off the kwoon’s high ceiling, strangely muffled where it bounces off the mats.

When Yancy’s frown becomes concerned and he immediately starts forward, Raleigh struggles to rise and sends a sloppy strike towards the other blond, thinking perhaps he’s taking advantage of the situation. Yancy, instead of blocking, darts backward and puts his hands up, dropping his hanbo to the mat.

“Woah-woah-woah, Rals, we’re done, alright? Jeeze, kid, I’m not gonna attack you when you’re hurt. That’s just not cool.”

Raleigh has just enough time to register Yancy’s words before there’s a cry of “Ray!” coupled with a softer yell of “Raleigh!” and he has a rather agitated thirteen year old hanging off of him while another places a tentative hand on his shoulder. Chuck has his arms wrapped around Raleigh’s shoulders and neck, hands splayed over the blond’s back protectively while he practically vibrates with emotion. Mako, still not the most comfortable with touching, is kneeling beside Raleigh, one hand perched where his upper arm meets his shoulder while the other is in a tight fist at her side.

Out of the corner of his eye, Raleigh can see the stare-down she’s having with Yancy. The older man puts his hands up incrementally further, eyebrows raising.

“I’m not gonna hurt him, I promise,” the ranger promises them, voice soothing. “I just want to help.”

 Raleigh can feel the movement of Chuck’s head as the redhead turns to glare—at least, Raleigh assumes Chuck’s glaring—at the older man.

“You’ve helped enough, mate.”

“Chuck,” Raleigh rasps, trying desperately not to let the pain radiating from his ankle color his voice. “S’okay. Was me. Not him. My fault. S’fine.”

Chuck pulls back and gives Raleigh a _look_ that says he wants to argue, but the action puts pressure on Raleigh’s leg, which in turn puts pressure on his ankle, and the blond sucks in a harsh breath through his teeth as a fresh wave of fire travels up his leg.

“Shit, fine, whatever,” Chuck mutters, keeping an arm around Raleigh’s shoulders as he moves to help the blond get up off the floor. Raleigh can see the glare the kid’s leveling at Yancy, would probably be scared shitless if that glare were directed at him, and he glances over to see that Mako is doing a damn fine impression as well. “You wanna help, help me get him to medical. Grab his other side. And keep him off that damn foot.”

Mako makes a not-so-quiet noise of protest.

“Go ahead and tell medical we’re coming, eh Mako?” Chuck asks her, glare dropping the instant he meets the slightly older teen’s gaze. She holds on to her glare for a few seconds, eventually relenting and mumbling something in Japanese that Chuck responds to just as quietly. With a furtive glance between Raleigh and Yancy, she finally darts out the door. As soon as she’s gone, Raleigh experimentally puts weight on his injured foot, and he ends up pitching forward in pain for his efforts. He hears Chuck give a shout of alarm, the redhead apparently not quite ready to take his whole weight at once, and then the mats getting closer and closer and—

And Yancy grabs him out of the air in a pair of strong arms, halting him before he can fall any further. His hands come up instinctively to catch his fall, and they land against the older man’s side and chest. Raleigh is panting lightly from the pain stealing his breath.

“I gotcha, kid.”

Raleigh blushes and nods feebly, though to what he’s not quite sure, as he tries to stop his lungs from feeling like they can’t pull in enough air. He feels Chuck’s smaller, but no less strong, arms wrap around his shoulders on the side opposite of Yancy as the two of them practically hoist him into the air.

“If you two’re done havin’ your sappy moment,” Chuck grumbles, “I think we should get going.”

 

 

They arrive at medical a few minutes later, Raleigh hopping almost comically between Yancy and Chuck. Neither of them complain about him putting most of his weight on them, nor do they start arguing. In fact, by the time they reach the facility, Chuck seems to have calmed down considerably—which is to say, he’s no longer shooting Yancy dirty looks out of the corner of his eye. Mako, as promised, has informed the staff of their arrival, and the four of them are seen into an examination room almost immediately.

“Alright then,” the nurse trails off as she consults her chart at the foot of the examination table, “ranger Becket. Tell me what happened.”

“Training accident,” Raleigh explains, gesturing between himself and Yancy. “We were sparring and I rolled my ankle.”

“Alright then,” the nurse continues, hanging the chart off the table and moving to roll up the leg of Raleigh’s training pants to begin poking and prodding at it experimentally. “Were there any cracks? A tearing sensation? Does this hurt?” She accentuates her last words by digging in lightly in one spot, looking at Raleigh’s face to gauge his reaction.

The blond shakes his head. “No, none of those. And, uh, no, no it doesn’t.”

She tries a few more points, each getting a negative response, until finally she grabs Raleigh’s whole foot and twists it to the side gently.

His vision doesn’t black out from pain, but he does let out a cry and try to jerk his foot from her grasp. She nods to herself, picking up the chart and making a note. He feels a hand land on his shoulder, and turns to see that it’s Yancy, coming to stand just behind him. Raleigh tries to ignore the warmth that spreads through his skin from where the other blond is touching him, but he can’t quite keep some of the heat from reaching his cheeks.

“Well, that’s good,” she concludes, glancing back up at Raleigh where he’s purposefully locking his gaze down on the table. “You got lucky, Becket. No breaks or fractures that I can find, and it doesn’t seem you sprained it or twisted it. Just strained it a bit further than it would probably like. It won’t put you completely out of commission, but you should stay off of it for a few days. In the meantime, I can get the doctor to prescribe you something to help it heal and keep the swelling down and give you a brace. Sound good?”

“Excellent, thank you ma’am,” Raleigh nods, relief coursing through him as he still doesn’t lift his head, the heat of Yancy’s touch continuing to suffuse down his spine. After she leaves, Chuck is the first to speak.

“Alright, injury aside, you two have _got_ to show that to my old man.”

Raleigh looks up sharply and sends the redhead a look of confusion. Out of the corner of his eye, he catches Yancy doing the same. Chuck, for his part, scoffs, throwing his hands up in the air and rolling his eyes. It’s as if, a part of Raleigh thinks, he’s trying to stuff as much exasperation into one action as he possibly can.

“Your match, you morons. Do you two even know how long you were at it in there?”

Raleigh risks glancing at Yancy where the older man is behind him, shaking his head. Yancy cocks an eyebrow and tilts his head to the side as his mouth twists, as if to say, ‘How the hell should I know?’ Raleigh’s head turn, though, _of course_ , reminds Raleigh just how close the other man is, how inviting his lips look when Raleigh’s eyes track down to them, make him wonder how they’d feel against—

“Oi, still talking here!” comes Chuck’s irritated huff, making Raleigh pull his gaze, and thoughts, away from the man in front of him. “And it was twenty minutes, you fucking oblivious sods.”

“Twenty two minutes and fifteen seconds,” Mako pipes up.

“Right, Twenty two fifteen, thank you Mako. The point is,” Chuck continues, “if that’s not fucking drift compatibility then I don’t know what the hell even is.”

 

 

Several days later, when Raleigh finally feels well enough to walk around, he and Yancy eschew their morning run in favor of a morning walk, helping Raleigh stretch out the stiff tendons in his ankle.

“So how was Chuck?” Yancy asks conversationally. “Was he a good nurse in my absence?”

Raleigh snorts in laughter.

“He was fine,” he answers the older man, laughing. “He was pissed that you reneged on your deal, though. And, seriously man, what the fuck? You two made a deal about who was gonna watch over me?”

It’s Yancy’s turn to laugh.

“You’re seventeen, Rals. You’re a whiny little shit just like Hansen. Don’t even bother trying to deny it. ‘Hey Yancy,’” the older man does a high-pitched imitation of Raleigh’s voice, shit-eating grin firmly in place, “‘can you get me a drink?’ ‘Hey Yancy, I’m too lazy to reach over and grab my tablet, could you _possibly_ get it for me?’ ‘Hey Yancy—’”

“Oh my god, _shut up_ , you ass,” Raleigh blushes, whacking his friend on the arm. “I wasn’t that bad. Besides,” he can feel his blush intensifying as he looks down, suddenly finding the rubberized surface of the track the most interesting thing around, “I missed you, you dick.”

It takes Raleigh another moment of walking to realize that the sounds of Yancy beside him—the man’s soft breaths, the muted sounds of his feet as they strike the ground—have disappeared. He stops and turns back to find Yancy stopped several paces back, just staring at him. There’s an unreadable expression on the older man’s face.

“You really mean that, kid?”

Raleigh can’t tell what the tone means, either. It makes him slightly uncomfortable. It’s not the fact that Yancy’s making that expression, but that he’s become accustomed to being able to read, with a certain degree of accuracy, Yancy’s moods and thoughts. It’d been something that sort of snuck up on him over the past two weeks or so, and it’d both terrified and delighted him while making something in his stomach do somersaults. So the fact that the other man’s suddenly as unreadable to Raleigh as a book written in Cantonese bothers him. A lot. He shuffles his feet against the ground, wrapping his arms around his midsection to hide his disquiet.

“Uh, yeah?”

Yancy stares at him for seven of Raleigh’s heartbeats before the older man breaks out in a grin, jogging lightly to catch up to Raleigh and swinging an arm around the shorter man’s shoulders.

“Alright then, cool. Let’s stretch out your ankle some more then head to breakfast, yeah?”

Raleigh nods, a smile threatening to break out on his own face.

“Yeah, that sounds great, Yance.”

And if Yancy doesn’t move his arm, well.

Neither of them mention it.

 

 

“Becket, Benham, get up here.”

Herc’s voice calls the two of them to the front of the kwoon, and Raleigh looks over at his friend, exchanging a grin with the older man.

“Shall we give them a show?” Yancy asks him as they start forward, the confused eyes of the other rangers on the two of them.

“Nah,” Raleigh quips back, smile widening until he can feel his cheeks aching. “I think I’ll just wipe the kwoon with you, make it cathartic for everyone involved.”

They reach the front, and Herc looks at them expectantly, gesturing towards the hanbo Chuck is holding beside him. The younger Hansen has a grin on his face so wide Raleigh can count his molars; he wonders, briefly, if he looks the same. He attributes his giddiness to the fact that Chuck had argued almost ceaselessly with him that he and Yancy were undeniably drift compatible, that this match was merely a formality because, once Herc saw them in action, the pilot wouldn’t be able to do anything _but_ pair them up.

They take their weapons from Chuck, who gives them each a thumbs up the moment his hands are free. If that isn’t the most adorably childish and un-Chuck-like thing Raleigh’s ever seen the redhead do, he doesn’t know what is.

“Ready, rangers?” Herc calls out. When they both nod, he does as well. “Then begin at your discretion.”

 “Just don’t expect me to go easy on you because you’re enfeebled, Rals,” Yancy taunts, circling slightly, staff held in front of him.

Raleigh just narrows his eyes, pulling his grin into something more feral.

“Wouldn’t have it any other way, old man,” he taunts back.

Then he rushes Yancy, weapon swinging wildly.

 

 

“Alright, enough, _enough_!” Herc shouts to be heard over the cracks of wood-on-wood and laughter. _Laughter_.

Immediately, Raleigh and Yancy spring apart, both of them panting and covered in a fine sheen of sweat. Yancy’s still chuckling slightly, twitching a tired eyebrow in Raleigh’s direction. Raleigh, for his part, takes the motion to mean ‘good match.’ After all, they’re tied, 1-1, and went nearly eight minutes in the first round of the match with neither of them scoring a point. The first point had gone to Raleigh, surprising both of them, and four minutes later Yancy had managed to force Raleigh to put his weight on his bad foot and stumble, claiming a point then. After that, Raleigh had been on his guard, and had avoided a repeat of that round by staying carefully on the offensive. They’d continued at a stalemate for a further ten minutes before Herc had finally stopped them. Presently, the pilot was shaking his head, expression somehow both drawn and full of awe.

“In my years of piloting, I’ve never seen anythin’ like that. I think it’s safe to say you boys are drift compatible. Congratulations, rangers. You’re advancing.”

Raleigh whoops loudly, throwing his arms into the air and practically sweeping Yancy up in a hug and spinning them around, ignoring the twinge in his ankle the action produces as the larger man lets out an indignant squawk in protest.

And then, because he’s not really thinking and just _acting_ and it feels so _right_ to have his arms around Yancy like this, Raleigh leans forward and presses his lips against the other ranger’s—his _partner’s_ —right there in front of the whole kwoon. He pulls back in near-panic when he realizes what he’s doing, apologies falling from his lips before Yancy just rolls his eyes, grabs the back of Raleigh’s neck, and hauls the younger ranger in again.

“About bloody time!” Chuck calls loudly, earning himself a raised finger from Raleigh as the young ranger finally allows himself to relax into Yancy’s side.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, comments—especially constructive criticism—are welcomed and greatly appreciated.


	6. Moving In

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Raleigh and Yancy get assigned a room together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SO YEAH. This was supposed to have a lot more plotty bits in it (and I did promise an explanation of Yancy's backstory) but, because this one freaking day ballooned out of control on me, this is what I've got for you guys. Sorry about that. I _promise_ that the next chapter will have more development and more of Yancy's story that you've all been waiting for.   
>     
>  ~~Also it's shorter than usual I'm sorry so so sorry.~~
> 
> Beta Credit: [Airwing](/users/Airwing)
> 
> ~~my beta calls me baby fish please someone help me~~

Chuck tags along when Herc leads them to their new quarters, Max weaving around their legs with happy, yipping barks, occasionally tripping over one of his own wrinkles in his excitement. Eventually, Chuck scoops the little bulldog into his arms, the puppy licking cheerfully at the teen’s face.

“You’ll be staying in the same private wing as the other pilot teams,” Herc is telling them, and Raleigh suddenly realizes that he recognizes this hallway as the same one to which Chuck brought him the other day. He surreptitiously sends the redhead a glare, which Chuck shrugs off with a smirk. “We use the same facilities as other rangers, but, once you have a partner, it’s good t’spend some time gettin’ to know each other without the rest of the world gawkin’ at ya’. So, y’see, private quarters are kinda a must; sure as hell beats having to deal with barracks, let me tell you,” Herc finishes, grinning back at Raleigh and Yancy as if they’ve been let in on some private joke. Raleigh smiles back, looking over at Yancy, finding the other blond man smiling at the older pilot as well.

A warm hand envelops Raleigh’s own, and he glances down to see that Yancy has threaded their fingers together in a gesture that is so affectionate that it makes butterflies leap to life in Raleigh’s stomach. It’s something so small yet so unexpected, given that they’d kissed for the first—and second—time not twenty minutes ago amidst the cheers and catcalls of their peers. Raleigh’s sure there are going to be rumors flying around the canteen tomorrow and for a long, _long_ while after that. Even so, he feels a quick vein of dread flash through him, and he snaps his eyes towards Herc to see that the older pilot is no longer looking back at the two of them. Yancy’s eye roll when Raleigh turns back towards him conveys his sweet exasperation—and something that appears to be _fondness_ —more effectively than his words ever could.

“Right, here we are,” Herc proclaims, stopping at a door that, to Raleigh, looks the same as the others in this stretch of hallway. This stretch of hallway which looks slightly fam—

Raleigh blinks. Looks up the hall, blinks again, looks behind him, and lets what he’s seeing sink in.

The reason this area looks so familiar is that this isn’t _close_ to where Chuck led him, this is almost _exactly_ where Chuck led him. In fact…

Raleigh glances across the hall from the door they’ve stopped at.

He’s almost entirely certain that, given the shape of the hallway, the positioning of the doors in the walls, and a myriad of other small factors that coalesce together in his mind, that they’re going to be living directly across the hall from the Hansens.

When Chuck gives Max a kiss on the top of his fuzzy little head and taps in the code to drop off Max with a whispered, “Be right back, handsome,” Raleigh’s suspicions are confirmed.

Well, he finds himself thinking, this could either be amazing or horrible.

Raleigh tracks his gaze back to Yancy—who’s also apparently just come to the same conclusion as him, but whose eyes are still on Chuck as the teen rejoins them—then further back to Herc. The pilot is also watching Chuck as he fishes around distractedly in his pockets, expression unreadable. When he notices Raleigh watching him, he lets out a small laugh, the sound foreign and strange to Raleigh’s ears.

“Looks like we’re neighbors, doesn’t it?”

He finally manages to pull a crumpled piece of paper out of his pocket, glancing at it before muttering to himself and putting a code into the lock on Raleigh and Yancy’s room.

“Your stuff’s already here. I called ahead and had some techs transfer it from your rooms,” Herc explains as he pushes to door open, and Raleigh follows, catching sight of the boxes scattered about the room. “If anything’s missing, be sure to let ‘em know.”

Yancy lets out a low whistle when he enters the room behind Raleigh, Chuck sliding in on the blond’s heels.

“Very nice,” Yancy murmurs, head swiveling as he takes in the room, and Raleigh breaks himself away from staring at his partner to actually do the same. The room is basically the same as Chuck and Herc’s; far roomier than the space they’d been given in the barracks, a private bathroom, and a small kitchenette. The main difference was that, where Chuck and Herc’s room had two beds, Raleigh and Yancy’s room had a bunk bed. Raleigh stares at that particular piece of furniture, trying to figure out in his head how sleeping arrangements are going to work. After all, it’s not like they can fight for the top bunk.

“You’re taking the lower bunk, kid.”

Raleigh’s eyes land on Yancy where the older man is smirking at him. Raleigh protests, despite the low pooling of heat the cocksure expression causes in his belly.

“Over my dead body, old man.”

His words earn him a snort and his second eye roll in as many minutes.

“I’m older, so I technically—”

“Should have a harder time getting into the top bunk,” Raleigh fires back before his partner can finish, injecting a hint of playfulness into his words. If the low chuckle he gets in response is any indication, Yancy heard it.

“So I technically _could_ pull that card on you, kiddo,” the older man finishes, smiling fondly. “But I’m not, because you’re actually, y’know, injured?” As if to accentuate his point, he sidles up to Raleigh and gently puts pressure on his shoulders. Raleigh’s ankle, still unhappy from fighting and stiff despite their attempts to stretch it by walking, nearly buckles under him, and Raleigh finds himself stumbling before he can stop himself, hands flailing before he manages to find purchase on the nearest object. Which, of course, means that he stops himself from falling by grabbing at Yancy’s side and almost pulling the older man over on top of him. Raleigh’s face flames as he realizes both that Yancy’s proven himself right and how the incident must’ve looked to an outsider.

Beside Yancy, Herc coughs gruffly, the sound slightly strained.

“If y’want, you can get the techs to separate the two bunks into individual beds. Some teams have been known to, ah,” he lifts a hand to scratch at the back of his neck, not looking at them, “push the two beds together.”

Raleigh just stares at the man, dumbstruck, for a moment before he turns towards Yancy. He widens his eyes fractionally, trying to convey to his partner without words an insistent, perhaps almost childish, “Can we? Please?”  The way Yancy’s eyebrows twitch towards his hairline suggestively is all the answer Raleigh needs.

“Now, there’s no rule against pilots being together, exactly,” Herc continues, face slightly pink, “and we all know what happens behind some of these doors. So, all any of us ask each other is to remember that the walls aren’t exactly soundproof. That being said,” his face hardens, though remains tinged with color, “if I have to wake up in the middle of the night to stop you two from rutting against each other like animals in heat because you can’t keep it down, you can be damn sure I will not be pleased about it. Am I understood, rangers?”

When Raleigh pulls away from Yancy, slightly mollified, and they both come to attention and give the older man quick ‘Yes, sir’s, Herc lets out a low rumble of a laugh and shakes his head at them.

“I’m not your superior anymore, boys. No need to ‘sir’ me. It’s ‘Herc.’ Even so, don’t piss me off, eh? Try to keep it down, at least after hours.”

And with that, he strides towards their door, opens it, and leaves, the metal frame thunking solidly. Raleigh and Yancy stare after him for a moment, before Raleigh takes a timid side-step towards his partner, reaching a hand out to rest on the older man’s hip.

“So,” he begins softly, “about what just happened. Do y’think that maybe—”

“That maybe you two should’ve gotten over yourselves and fucking done it weeks ago? Yeah, I do.”

Adrenaline surges through Raleigh’s veins as he jumps about a foot in the air, whirling to find that Chuck hadn’t left with his father. At the moment, he’s standing next to the closed door, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed over his chest and his typical shit-eating grin on his face, pleased that his comment startled his friends.

“Christ, Chuck, don’t fucking _do_ that!” Raleigh whines as his nerves slowly calm themselves. The younger teen just laughs, gesturing between Raleigh and Yancy.

“Was totally worth it to see the looks on your faces, though. Wish I’d had a camera for that one.”

He pushes away from the wall, expression becoming serious.

“I should probably tell you some stuff my old man forgot, though. Dunno why. Probably the way you two were making sex eyes at each other. Not like that’s anything new. Honestly, I woulda thought he’d’ve noticed—”

“Chuck,” Yancy growls warningly, and Raleigh feels one of the older pilot’s arms snake around his waist.

“Right,” Chuck quips, mouth twisting as his eyes sparkle as if in laughter, ever a bag of mixed messages. “You’ll both probably be scheduled into the simulator times in a week or two. The schedule’s made about a week in advance, so they’ll need to clear some space so you two can get started. Your time slots’ll probably be longer than normal, too, since, y’know, you’re new and—”

“How do you know all this?” Raleigh interrupted, feeling his brows crease in confusion. He tries to resist squirming when he feels Yancy’s fingertips slip under the hem of his shirt, fiddling with the edge of the material and ghosting over the skin of his hip.

Chuck blinks at him, expression affronted before a half second before it’s gone.

“Because, dumbass,” he explains as if talking to a small child, “m’old man’s in charge of this shit and I’ve heard him spell it out to two other teams while I’ve been here. S’not hard to remember.”

Yancy’s fingers switch direction and dip below Raleigh’s waistband, teasing the sensitive skin. The move startles Raleigh, and he tries to stop the twitchy jump he makes and the loud moan that tries to rip its way from his throat at the stimulation. However, he only manages to make it look like he shivered and whimpered. Chuck’s eyes fix on him instantly, and the redhead’s smirk comes back full force.

“You two’re gonna bang the second I leave, aren’t you?” He sounds entirely too pleased at the prospect.

The noise Yancy makes is hardly human—Raleigh would describe it somewhere between a growl and a groan of frustration—as he strides across the room and flings the door open, grabbing Chuck by the back of the neck and practically _throwing_ the squawking teenager through it. In all honesty, he doesn’t _throw_ Chuck, more like pushes him forcefully until he’s standing at the top of the steps that lead up to their door.

“Oi!” Chuck yells, tone mock-offended, his smirk still firmly in place as his eyes glimmer mischievously. “What if I wanted to watch?”

Yancy slams the door in his face.

The second he turns back towards Raleigh, the younger blond gives into the warm feeling that’s been building in his gut and bursts out laughing. He laughs even harder when there’s the sound of a heavy _thud_ and swearing coming from the other side of the door. Apparently Chuck had fallen off their stoop in surprise. Raleigh’s giggles finally subside when Chuck’s stream of swear words are cut off by the distant _bang_ of metal on metal that tells them that he’d gone to his own room. Throughout all of it, Yancy just gives Raleigh a level stare, lips twitching at the corners, obviously trying to keep a straight face.

“Alright, kiddo,” he says once Raleigh’s calmed down enough to actually listen to him, gesturing towards the bunk beds. “Let’s get these squared away. Sound good?” Yancy, turns, takes a step towards the beds, then freezes and whirls back towards Raleigh, expression suddenly taut.

“I mean, that is, unless you don’t want to?” It’s not worded like a question, but the older man manages to make it sound like one nonetheless. Raleigh’s heart swells at the consideration being offered him, but before he can assuage Yancy’s fears, the taller blond is speaking again, rubbing at his face with his hands, eyes hidden from Raleigh.

“No, of course not, jesus, we’ve only kissed a few times twenty minutes ago, I’m so sorry I don’t know what I was thinkin—”

“Yance,” Raleigh interrupts, trying to keep his tone low and soothing, walking up to his partner and clutching at the man’s raised forearms. Gently, he applies pressure, pulling the limbs down and forcing Yancy to look him in the eye. The vulnerability he sees reflected there make him want to reach out and hug the other man, to tell him he was going to suggest the same thing, but he knows that’s not really as important as his next words.

“I want to.”

He presses a quick kiss to the corner of Yancy’s slack mouth then turns away, smiling, to start working on the bunks.

A few seconds later, after murmuring a soft, almost reverent, “Oh,” Yancy joins him.

 

 

Contrary to what Chuck had insinuated, they do not “bang” as soon as he leaves. They spend the next half hour figuring out how the bunks even come apart and the half hour after that sneaking around to find power tools. Then, of course, they realize that neither of them knows their room code (Herc hadn’t told them nor had he given them the little slip of paper) and so, refusing to bother the older pilot so soon after moving in, they instead opt to find a tech to let them in. As he fiddles with the panel to reveal the master key hole, the French man explains to them in heavily accented English that they were _supposed_ to have set the lock code while still inside, that it’ll accept whatever code they want to put in this first time, but that if they want to change it again they’ll have to put in their old code as well. When he finally finds the hole and slots a data chip from around his neck into the appropriate spot, he opens the door and shows them the keypad on the back of the door. When he finally leaves, he reminds them to put in a code they’ll both remember, and reassures them that it’s not an uncommon occurrence whenever a new pilot pair is picked.

Raleigh stares at the keypad, its square of numbers with a delete and enter key surrounding the zero at the bottom.

“So we just… push the enter key and put in the code?” Raleigh verifies with Yancy, making sure that he wasn’t remembering incorrectly.

“And then hit enter again, yeah,” Yancy answers him, tone contemplative.

Raleigh nods, hesitantly pressing the enter key. The keys become outlined in a faint green light. His fingers hover over the numbers, unsure of what to put in.

“Any ideas?” he asks, turning towards Yancy to find the older man deep in thought. Finally, his partner seems to come to a realization or conclusion of some kind and steps forward, entering numbers as he speaks them aloud.

“Seven, Two, Five, Seven,” Yancy mutters, though not quietly enough that Raleigh can’t hear. The older man hits the enter key when he’s done, and the green display light blinks three times before dimming. The younger pilot looks up from the pink afterimage lightly imprinted upon his retinas to glance at his partner.

“Does it mean anything?” he inquires gently, and the small, tight smile her gets in return is enough to tell him that, yes, it does.

“Nah, kiddo,” Yancy says softly, putting a hand on Raleigh’s shoulder and squeezing gently. “Just something I thought up. Think you can remember it?”

“Seven two five seven,” Raleigh recites back dutifully, committing the numbers to memory.

 

 

Once they have their tools, it’s a quick matter to disconnect the bunk beds. Moving them turns out to be another obstacle, as each bedframe is nearly three hundred pounds of solid steel, but they manage after much groaning and complaining. When finally they have the beds pushed together and sheets back on the mattresses, Yancy pulls his box of belongings onto the bed and starts sorting through them. At first, it’s nothing too amazing. A few CDs—which make Raleigh Chuckle because really? It’s 2016. Who uses CDs anymore?—a bundle of papers and envelopes held together by rubber bands, the clothes he’d brought with him plus his uniforms from the PPDC, and a small photo album that Yancy puts in his own miniature dresser without opening. What really catches Raleigh’s attention, though, is the old-school Polaroid camera the older man pulls out last and places on top of the dresser. He pauses his own unpacking—not like he has much, anyway—and walks over to the camera, picking it up as gently as he can and holding it almost reverently.

When he’d been younger, his father had bought him one of these at a garage sale, along with a few dozen pieces of photograph paper. Raleigh had been delighted, taking pictures of everything that caught his fancy: a worm on the sidewalk, his parents smiling at each other, a sunset, Jazmine… And then he’d dropped it, and the shutter had never worked properly after that. The few pictures he’d taken had been among his most treasured possessions, but they’d been left in his bedside table when the CPS had come to his door and demanded that he pack a bag in five minutes and, no, they weren’t kidding.

Raleigh holds the camera tenderly, knowing that the device was considered ancient even before he was born. He’s making sure this one won’t meet the same fate as his old one when a warm body presses against him. For a terrifying moment, he jumps and he feels like his hands are going to let the camera go flying. Before it can, though, strong hands warp around his own, and he feels Yancy’s stubble rubbing against his cheek as the older man tucks his chin onto Raleigh’s shoulder.

“Used to be my mom’s,” the older man says by way of explanation. When Raleigh doesn’t respond, he adds, “What, no ‘wow Yancy that’s so old-school, you old man’?”

“Nah,” Raleigh answers, shaking his head ever so slightly so that he doesn’t accidentally bash the other man. “I like it. I used to have one as a kid. Broke it, though. Just, got nostalgic when I saw yours, I guess.”

He can’t help the smile that creeps onto his face when Yancy starts nuzzling into his cheek and neck, lips ghosting over his pulse, or the way his eyes slip shut as he relaxes his neck ever so slightly. Honestly, it feels _good_ to just _let go_ for once in what feels like forever. He tilts his head to the side, still smiling, as he seeks out Yancy’s lips to return the older man’s kisses.

A flash behind his eyelids startles Raleigh, and his eyes fly open to see a photograph sticking out of the front of the camera. The younger ranger can feel Yancy’s soft chuckles as they huff out near his ear, echoing inside the teen’s ribcage. Before he can even think about it, Yancy grabs the photo and dances away with both it and the camera, and Raleigh feels something both indignant and playful well up in him. He spends the next few minutes chasing Yancy around their cramped room, finally trapping the older man in a corner.

“Give it to me, Yance, that was _cheating_ ,” Raleigh pants, trying to grab the now-developed photo away from Yancy. The taller blond just cackles and looks up at said photo, then suddenly freezes, expression cracking at the edges.

“Rals,” he whispers, not moving, but not actively fighting the teen anymore, “you need to look at this. Don’t grab at it, okay? Just… you need to see it.”

Raleigh eventually huffs his agreement, unable to resist the puppy-dog eyes Yancy is throwing his way. When Yancy eventually does show him the picture, though, he’s slightly stunned.

In the picture, Yancy is smirking devilishly at the camera, lips on the underside of Raleigh’s jaw, while Raleigh’s face is turned towards him slightly. His mouth is slightly open and his eyes are closed in an expression that looks so painfully _open_ it makes some unknown emotion well up in Raleigh’s gut. What’s most surprising, though, is how _happy_ he looks. The Raleigh in the photograph looks, for all intents and purposes, like there’s nowhere he’d rather be, like he doesn’t have a single care in the world and isn’t still mourning the loss of a family that ceased being a family to him after he was ten. He didn’t know he could still look like that.

“Wow,” Raleigh whispers reverently, fingers darting out to stroke at the edge of the photo. Yancy, however, smirks and pulls it away, pulling a pen and tape out of his box and scrawling something on the bottom of the photograph before sticking it to the wall above their joined beds. Raleigh leans forward to read the inscription, and he nearly chokes on his tongue when he does.

“’Me and Baby Fish,’ Yance? Really? Did you _have_ to do that in pen?”

“Of course,” the older man answers lightly, darting forward to place a swift, heated kiss on Raleigh’s lips that has the teen’s knees nearly buckling at the desire it sends racing through his veins like molten metal. Raleigh’s eyes slip shut of their own accord when Yancy leans back in, lips moving together seemingly with a mind of their own until the teen feels a tongue swipe his lower lips, asking for entrance. He moans at the attention, mouth opening slightly to allow—

Another flash.

“Goddamnit, Yancy!”

 

 

By the time the two of them finally call it a night, they’ve managed to unpack most of their things and get them stowed. Yancy has also managed to take just over a dozen photos, captioning and taping up each and every one of them. The second one he’d taken earlier had been titled “Our third kiss (didn’t have camera for first and second so deal)” and it had been hung next to the first, the rest radiating outward from there.

At the moment, though, the two of them were curled up together, spooning. After much debate, Yancy had declared that Raleigh, at least for tonight, was the little spoon because he was shorter anyway, damn it, and they could renegotiate another time. Raleigh had, for his part, agreed after much protest. Secretly, however, he doesn’t mind the delight he feels when the older man’s arms slip around his waist and draw him in closer. He can feel the heat of Yancy’s body through the thin material of their sleep shirts, can feel the way the muscles of the older man’s torso ripple slightly when he shifts his grip and shuffles his legs, twining them with Raleigh’s own, can feel Yancy’s hand—

Oh.

He can feel Yancy’s hand as it traces patterns over the plane of his stomach, rubbing in small, soothing circular motions as it slips beneath the material. Yancy starts placing small, open-mouthed kisses against the back of Raleigh’s neck, and Raleigh arches as the older man’s teeth gently scrape at the skin there, a gasp leaving his lips.

“Yance—” he manages to gasp out, but the rest is a strangled moan when Yancy angles his fingers and lets his blunt nails scrape over Raleigh’s abdomen, hand moving upward to caress and scratch at Raleigh’s chest. Raleigh actually _does_ moan—loudly—when the older man pinches at his nipples teasingly, Yancy’s lips covering his own to swallow down the tail end of the sound.

In a flash, Raleigh’s rolling onto his back, his partner moving from behind him to hover atop his body, the other ranger’s lips never leaving his. As Yancy attacks Raleigh’s mouth, slippery tongue darting between the younger blond’s teeth, tasting and caressing, Raleigh feels the now-free hand that had been under his body splay itself over his abs, replacing the hand that is still marking up his chest. Raleigh moans from the stimulation, sucking on Yancy’s tongue, trying to push his body closer to the other ranger’s hands, not wanting the feelings coursing through him to stop. He’s so hard in his sweats he’s pretty sure he could come without being touched at this point, and the molten feeling of Yancy’s own arousal against his hip isn’t helping matters. His arms flail around; he’s not entirely sure what to do with his hands, so he settles for holding on to Yancy’s sides with an almost-bruising grip that has the other blond making an unspeakably erotic moaning sound into Raleigh’s mouth.

Yancy pulls back for a second, panting, and mumbles, “ _God_ , kid, you don’t even know how long I’ve wanted this,” before diving back in and claiming Raleigh’s lips in a  bruising kiss. As he does, the hand on Raleigh’s stomach flutters lower, teasing at the skin under the waistband of his sweats.

Alarm bells immediately go off in Raleigh’s head as his whole body jumps at the contact like an over-strung bow snapping, and his pulls on Yancy’s sides instantly, almost instinctively, transform into pushes. Yancy must think he’s being coy, though—either that or he’s not entirely cognizant of Raleigh’s reaction at the moment—because he just pushes forward harder, a finger breaching the barrier of elastic to brush at the skin of Raleigh’s pelvis.

“Mm, no, Yancy, stop, _please_ ,” Raleigh murmurs, almost desperately, into the kiss, trying to pull back.

That seems to do it, because Yancy’s eyes fly open to meet his. The older man must see something there, because he propels himself off of Raleigh so fast that he actually overshoots and falls on the floor, face stricken. He runs a shaky hand over his face, not meeting Raleigh’s gaze.

“Jesus, fuck, kid, I—I’m so sorry. I don’t know what came over me, I just—I never want to—I’m _so sorry_ , I—”

“Yancy,” Raleigh interrupts his partner, whose gaze snaps to meet his own as his mouth slams shut with an audible clack. “It’s okay, alright? I’m not mad, okay?”

“How can you say that?” the older man whispers. “I, _Jesus_ , you told me to stop and I didn’t and I might have—”

“Might have nothing, you didn’t _do_ anything. You _stopped,_ Yance. I told you, I’m not mad. I just… Can we go slow for now?” Raleigh lets his gaze linger on Yancy, deciding that, if they’re going to do this, might as well get this conversation out of the way now. It’s going to come up eventually, after all, so now’s a good a time as any. “It’s just, I’ve never actually, y’know…”

Yancy cocks his head to the side, horror in his gaze intensifying.

“You mean—oh my god, you’re still a _virgin_? And I just almost forced you—oh _god_.”

Raleigh moves towards the edge of their bed and hauls his partner back onto the mattress, trying to soothe the other man’s stricken expression. “Uh, I mean, I never really had a boyfriend or anything except for, like, a week when I was fifteen, so…” He trails off, face heating. However, when he notices that Yancy’s face is only becoming more and more troubled, he reaches out and grasps the older man’s jaw and leans forward, placing a small kiss at the corner of his mouth.

“Hey,” he says, reinforcing his words with a gentle shake that draw’s his partner’s gaze back to his. “It’s _okay_ , Yance. You stopped when I asked you to.”

“But—”

“But nothing. You stopped. That’s what counts. I trust you, okay? And, for now, I want you to hold me. Think you can do that? I _trust you_ ,” he says again when he sees Yancy’s mouth opening in protest, putting more emphasis on the words the second time. “Just, can we keep it above the waist for now?”

Yancy, after a few more soft apologies that Raleigh keeps insisting are unnecessary, finally wraps his arms around Raleigh’s shoulders, keeping his hands deliberately high. Raleigh relaxes back into the touch, leaning back to place a chaste kiss on his partner’s cheek and another on his lips, and then rearranges himself so that his head is right by Yancy’s chest.

He falls asleep to the slow beat of the other man’s heart, feeling safer and more content than he has in a long time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, quick plug: I'm working on a sequel to [my Raleigh/Chuck/Herc pornshot](/works/1155761) and it'll probably be up before next Friday. 
> 
> As always, comments and constructive criticism are greatly appreciated. You guys are the best!


	7. Find Your Voice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The events and aftermath of the first night the boys spend together, and a talk long-coming is finally had.
> 
> Chapter title from "Miracle" by OceanLab: " _But there are some times / When you should try to find your voice / And this is one voice that you must find today_."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I PROMISED. I PROMISED YOU GUYS. And ~~after breaking that promise two times~~ I finally delivered! :'D
> 
> Beta Credit: [Airwing](/users/Airwing)

For the first time since coming to the academy, Raleigh dreams.

Everything is warped and distorted at the edges. Words sound too clear. Shapes look _wrong_. And yet, in the moment, his dreaming mind cannot discern what exactly it is that’s nagging at it incessantly as _not right_. Which is why, when he finds himself facing the specter of his father, his body once again that of a fifteen-year-old, nothing feels out of place.

“Why?” Raleigh finds himself asking the older man. “Why did you leave? Why couldn’t you stay?”

Richard Becket, as he has every other time Raleigh has had this dream, says nothing to his son. He simply stares straight into—straight through—the teenager with the steely blue eyes Raleigh inherited from him.

“Was it mom’s death?” Raleigh continues when he continues to get stony silence.

His father blinks once, the motion laconic, as if he’s living in slow motion, though it hardly seems to be in response to Raleigh’s words given the way his eyes are now focused at some point behind his son.

Raleigh takes a breath to speak again, trying to let the influx of air calm the trembling that’s started in his limbs. Even though some part of him knows he won’t find the answers he seeks, he has to _try_. When the words finally come out, they sound small and far away.

“Was it because Jazmine died?”

The older Becket’s eyes remain fixated on something in the distance, expression a mask of neutrality and disinterest.

 “Was it me?”

Another slow blink. This time, though, his father turns away from him and begins walking into the swirling blackness that surrounds them. Raleigh finds himself standing—when had he been sitting?—from the chair beside his mother’s corpse, hand reaching out for the man who is supposed to hold him and tell him it’s going to be okay, that they’ll figure it out, that it’s no one’s damn _fault_.

“Dad, please.”

His father continues walking. Raleigh lunges forward and grabs the older man’s hand in his own. It’s icy cold, like his mother’s had been when she died.

“Dad, _please_ , tell me what I did wrong.”

The older Becket stops, not turning around to face his son. Raleigh looks at the back of his head, the set of his shoulders, for any sign that his words have penetrated through to his father. He sees nothing but the way the man’s shoulders are slumped slightly in defeat, the way his head hangs forward almost imperceptibly.

“Please don’t leave me,” Raleigh begs, tears flowing freely now as he clings to the last vestige of a life he understands, of a life that, at one point, wasn’t riddled with death and despair and monsters that are trying to tear the world down. “I don’t think I can do this alone. _Please_ stay. Don’t go. Don’t leave me. _Please_.”

Then his father does something unexpected. He looks back—looks _at Raleigh_. This time, though, his eyes are different.

They’re a deep, grey-blue.

Like his mother’s eyes.

Like—

“Raleigh,” his father says, speaking over his own shoulder. “Wake up.”

Confusion shoots through Raleigh like a bullet, ripping through his mind and out the other side, taking his coherent thoughts with it.

“W-wha—?”

“Wake up, Rals,” His father continues. All Raleigh can do is stare. “C’mon, buddy, wake up, you’re scaring me.”

His father whirls on him and grabs him forcefully by the shoulders, fingers digging into the muscle painfully, and Raleigh flinches at the sudden contact.

“C’mon, kid, _snap out of it_!”

Then he’s falling.

 

 

Raleigh wakes, screaming. His mind tries desperately to take stock of his surroundings, but finds them unfamiliar, and so regresses within itself to try and hide from the unknown, from the feeling of abandonment and sadness pounding through his veins like shards of glass.  The events of the dream are already mostly gone, fading into the haze to which all dream-memory resigns itself, but a single image remains with vivid clarity: his father, walking away as Raleigh hurls questions, accusations, at the older man’s retreating back, nothing he says making the man stop until he fades away into the inky darkness and leaves Raleigh alone beside either the corpse of his mother or sister.

On some level, he knows it was a dream, that it wasn’t real, that it hadn’t happened like that, that his father had left before Raleigh was able to ask anything at all.

It doesn’t make the unanswered questions hurt any less. It doesn’t make the pain coiling within him, barbed and frozen, _hurt_ any less. Shudders wrack Raleigh’s body as he tries to curl into a ball, the instinct to hide away from the ache that fills him overriding the knowledge that this isn’t something he can escape, that it’s not something from the outside. It’s only then, when he realizes that he _can’t_ move, that something is keeping him immobile, that he becomes aware of the fact that someone is holding him.

_Yancy_ is holding him.

_Yancy_.

The one word penetrates his mind, flushing everything else away, and the memory comes flooding back to him; the _real_ memory, where his father hadn’t said anything, had just packed up one night and driven away after a week of saying nothing to his son, had left the silence behind in Raleigh’s mind to fester and rot.

As his eyes blur with tears, Raleigh finds his body surging into motion without consulting him first, his hands flying up to Yancy’s neck to find purchase before he slams his lips up onto his partner’s mouth. A whimper works its way from the depths of his throat, though whether at the heat that rises in his belly or at the cold shivers that still run down his spine, Raleigh doesn’t know. The force—the _urgency_ —of his kiss must catch Yancy off guard, because, the next thing Raleigh knows, the two of them are toppling backwards until Raleigh is lying on top of Yancy, the older blond stretched out across the breadth of their shared, conjoined beds. It’s only as he becomes fully aware of the way that his hands are now fisting the front of Yancy’s thin t-shirt, the way the other man is running a soothing hand up and down his spine, that he realizes that he’s _speaking_. Words are jumping out of his throat into every space between kisses, the rest being swallowed down by the man beneath him.

“Please,” he’s begging, “please don’t leave me, too.”

And between kisses, between gasping, desperate breaths, he catches Yancy’s response.

“I’m not going anywhere, kid.”

 

 

They talk about it the next morning.

Raleigh apologizes to Yancy for waking him. The older man’s face twists into an unreadable expression before he sweeps Raleigh into a hug and tells him that, if the teenager ever apologizes for having a nightmare again, Yancy will gladly punch him in the face.

Raleigh laughs until Yancy pulls back, face deathly serious, at which point the sound dies in the younger blond’s throat.

“I’m serious, kid. Never apologize for what you can’t help. Besides, I’d rather you have me there instead of you having to go through it alone.”

The words pull at something deep within Raleigh’s chest, and he feels a sudden sensation of weightlessness.

It feels curiously like falling.

 

 

Chuck catches them when they finally wander out of their room around noon, the redhead apparently waiting in his own room for them to emerge into the daylight. His smirk is positively predatory as he takes in Raleigh’s appearance. The teen is sure that he looks like he didn’t get any sleep last night—because, in all honesty, that was exactly what had happened—hair sticking up and tired bags under his eyes. Despite the fact that both Raleigh and Yancy had gone back to bed after their talk earlier, Raleigh hadn’t been able to fall asleep again. Instead, he’d lain in Yancy’s arms for the four hours the older man had slept, letting the heartbeat that thudded gently against his back soothe him into a doze through which time seemed to slip. They’d showered separately. Yancy had let Raleigh go first, and he hadn’t uttered a word when the younger pilot had used up most of the hot water, only said that he hoped Raleigh felt better and placed a light kiss on the his partner’s temple before he’d slipped into the steamy bathroom.

“So,” Chuck drawls, drawing the word out as he steps down the stairs in front of his room to meet them in the middle of the hallway, Max trailing him dutifully. “I guess we know who didn’t get any sleep last night, eh?”

On any other day, Raleigh would’ve gone along with Chuck’s ribbing. However, given the events of the previous night and his general lack of sleep, he’s not exactly in the mood. He makes a noncommittal grunt and turns towards the canteen, walking off without offering a real greeting or response. Some part of him feels bad, but the larger part of him is hungry and tired and knows that his low blood sugar likely isn’t helping anything.

“What crawled up his arse and died?” he hears Chuck asking Yancy, followed by the _thwack_ of a gentle smack.

“Ow! What the hell, mate? The fuck was that for?”

“Raleigh didn’t sleep well,” Yancy responds evenly, “and you know how he gets when he doesn’t get his morning run in. Be nice. Don’t ask. Don’t make that face at me, I know you were going to ask.”

“Was not!”

Fond laughter echoes down the hallway, and Raleigh doesn’t need to turn around to know it’s Yancy’s.

“Whatever, kid. Let’s get food, huh? When did you eat breakfast?”

When Chuck doesn’t answer for a moment, Yancy’s answer comes out sounding a lot more paternal that Raleigh thinks the older ranger intends.

“Chuck…”

“Fuck off.”

Their voices are getting closer. Presumably they’re following now. Raleigh dodges around a convoy of K-Scientists and their techs escorting a large, yellow tank of…something. He comes to the intersection of the main hallway and the pilot’s wing, hanging a left towards the caf’, mind only half-listening at this point.

“ _Chuck…_ ”

“I said _fuck off_ , Benham.”

There’s another _thwack_ , followed by a low growl of, “You idiot,” before Yancy and Chuck appear in Raleigh’s peripheral vision, the older blond holding the redhead by the arm while the younger teen rubs the back of his head, expression murderous.

“You’re not my fucking dad, asshole,” Chuck grits out. Yancy looks at the kid sideways, but otherwise keeps pace with Raleigh, not slowing down.

“No, your dad—and I’ll deny this if you tell anyone I said it—your dad would be exactly where he is now, overseeing compatibility trials until four or five, not making sure his thirteen-year-old son eats regularly like a father _should_.”

Chuck’s jaw slams shut with an audible clack of teeth, whatever retort he’d been preparing cut off at the root. After several seconds of walking in silence, he shakes his arm out of Yancy’s grip and looks at his feet, glaring at the corrugated metal passing by under their feet.

“Thanks,” he eventually mutters.

Yancy just snorts and shakes his head.

“If Raleigh were even half awake right now he’d be yelling at you too, kid.”

The continue their trip in silence, the only sound, other than the constant chatter of the hallways, Max’s excited little huffs as he keeps pace with them.

 

 

Once they arrive at the mess, Yancy sits Raleigh down at a table and orders Chuck to keep the younger blond from falling over. The action and words earn the older man a pout and a whine from Raleigh and an eyeroll from Chuck that is so full of derision that Raleigh can _feel_ it blistering the side of his face. Ignoring both their protests with an ease that looks so practiced Raleigh is momentarily convinced they’ve all been friends for years before he reminds himself that he’s been on Kodiak Island for fewer than four months, Yancy heads over to the line and grabs three trays, starting the process of piling them each with generous helpings of whatever the staff have convinced themselves is considered food.

“Oi, baby fish, stay awake,” Chuck grumbles, snapping his fingers in front of Raleigh’s face as the blond tries to drop his head forward onto the table. Raleigh makes a disgruntled growling sound, which only serves to get a laugh out of Chuck.

“Jeeze, mate, sex must’ve been awesome if you went at it long enough to make even _you_ have the IQ of a panda in the morning.”

Raleigh just sighs, knowing Chuck isn’t going to stop pestering him about this all day until the redhead gets his answer.

“We din’n,” is about all he can manage to get out coherently, catching his chin in his hands, elbows locked on the table, so he can remain upright on his own without exerting any real effort. His eyes, though, start to droop closed again until there’s a disbelieving snort from across the table.

“Right, whatever, mate. If you don’t wanna talk about it, y’can just say so.”

Raleigh’s not sure what it is that sets him off. Maybe it’s the way Chuck’s smirking at him, the expression knowing even though the redhead clearly know nothing, or maybe it’s the way he’s speaking to Raleigh, self-satisfied and superior, or _maybe_ it’s just the words themselves. Regardless, the blond feels a spike of anger embed itself in his lungs, stabbing into him as he drops his hands, tiredness abruptly vanishing, and he draws in a breath to speak. When it comes out, his voice is carefully measured and restrained; after all, it won’t do to cause a scene in the mess.

“No, Chuck, I don’t really want to talk about what happened last night, but since you’re not letting it go, we didn’t have sex, alright? I’m a fucking virgin and I wasn’t ready. Happy?” The blond punctuates his words with a glare, then leans down and rests his forehead on the metal surface of the table. He’s not tired anymore, but he _really_ doesn’t want to look at Chuck right now. He just _knows_ he’s about to get flack for the virgin comment, and, while he’s usually fine to deal with Chuck’s rather unique brand of humor, after the nightmare last night, his mental reserves of patience and understanding are running on empty.

However, he can’t restrain his surprise when Chuck’s next words reach his ears.

“‘M sorry, Raleigh. I didn’t know.”

And this time, Raleigh knows, it’s _both_ the words and the redhead’s tone that makes him lift his head sharply, ignoring the way everything spins for a half-second. The fact that Chuck had apologized is one thing, but the fact that he sounds like he _means_ it—like he’s actually unhappy that he’s upset Raleigh—is another entirely. Even more telling is the fact that Chuck used Raleigh’s full name without putting any joking emphasis on one syllable or another, the word coming out forced and stilted around the Australian’s accent. When he manages to focus on the younger teen after a moment, Chuck is the one looking down, face drawn. He looks so upset—like he’s afraid Raleigh’s going to just get up and leave—that Raleigh can’t help the sigh that works its way from between his lips. If there’s one thing the blond has learned over the past several months, it’s that Chuck has abandonment issues that make Raleigh look perfectly healthy.

“It’s fine, Chuck, okay? I mean, how _could_ you have known?”

Chuck’s face twists in a grimace before he looks up, eyes betraying a kernel of hope in their depths.

“You mean it?”

A sigh of exasperation works its way out of Raleigh’s lips.

“Yes, Chuck. I mean it. Not like I’ve ever discussed my sex life—or lack thereof, I guess—with you before.”

They sit in silence for twenty of Raleigh’s tired heartbeats, Chuck’s face a storm of emotions, before the redhead sends him a look that is both apologetic and mixed with a bit of the cockiness Raleigh’s come to expect from him.

“I dunno, guess I never figured someone as attractive as you wouldn’t have gotten some in school or somethin’. I just, I figured the girls’d be all over you, y’know?”

Raleigh snorts, a smile creeping at the corners of his mouth.

“Well, Chuck,” he explains softly, “you may or may not have noticed that I don’t really like girls that way, so even if they had, which they didn’t, by the way, it wouldn’t’ve mattered.” Something occurs to him then, and his smile spreads into a full-fledged grin. “And you think I’m attractive, huh? Should I warn Yancy?”

Though Chuck would kill him for even thinking it, Raleigh can’t help but think of the flush that spreads over the redhead’s cheeks as adorable.

“What the _fuck_ , Ray? No! I don’t think about you that way, mate. I mean, yeah, sure, I might’ve had a crush on you when we first met and all, but you are _way_ too old for me and you have Yancy and—”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Raleigh interrupts, grin widening until his cheeks ache. “You had a crush on me when we first met?”

Chuck’s jaw flaps for a moment before the flush from earlier evolves into a full-fledged blush, darkening until the younger teen’s freckles are lost in the cherry red color.

“Look, it’s not like that, I—I mean, it’s—just, it’s not what you think, Ray, alright? I got over it really fast, and—”

Raleigh holds his hand up, cutting off whatever the redhead had been about to say as he tries to contain his laughter.

“It’s _fine_ , Chuck. It’s flattering, really. Don’t worry about it.”

Chuck’s jaw snaps shut with a clack, his face still the color of an overripe strawberry. Which is, of course, when Yancy returns, balancing three trays of food in two arms.

“Alright, princesses,” he announces with a smirk, letting the trays clatter to the tabletop. “Lunch is serve—why is Chuck red? You okay there, Chuckles?” The first question is directed at a still-grinning Raleigh, while the second is sent the redhead’s way.

Chuck’s gaze meet’s Yancy’s, and Raleigh sees something harden in the younger teen’s face as some of the redness fades away. The blond wracks his brain trying to figure out the cause of the change in Chuck’s demeanor. It only takes him a second to guess, though, and Raleigh feels his smirk drop away as he opens his mouth to interrupt the words he’s almost sure are about to fly. However, he’s too late.

“If you hurt him, Benham, if you make his first time horrible, or you pressure him into anything, and I do mean _anything_ , he doesn’t want to do? I will come after you. And then I’ll toss your body in the Pacific and let the Blue finish you.” The words are as cold and flinty as Chuck’s gaze, leaving no room in Raleigh’s mind that the redhead means every word. It’s...nice, in a way, to have someone willing to stand up for him like this.

“Chuck,” Raleigh finally manages to speak through the lump of affection that’s formed in his throat, “it’s fine, really. He’s not going to—”

“If I do any of that,” Yancy’s quiet voice undercuts whatever Raleigh was trying to say as the older blond stares Chuck square in the eye, face grim and determined as he takes his seat across from the two teenagers, “then I’ll let you.”

Raleigh feels that same weightlessness from the morning threatening to overwhelm him. He pulls a plate of what looks like an attempt to make roast beef towards him and shovels some into his mouth, looking down as he chews to hide the blush he can feel spreading over his cheeks.

 

 

Raleigh almost passes out again before they finish their breakfast-slash-lunch, and Yancy and Chuck each grab him under an arm when they’re done and haul him back to his and Yancy’s room. They both tuck him in when they get back a few minutes after two o’clock. Just before Raleigh loses consciousness, he hears the two of them talking softly.

“I mean it, Benham. Don’t fuck this up, alright?”

“I meant it, too, Chuck. I can’t…” Yancy’s voice trails off, and there’s a soft rustling of cloth on skin; in his mind’s eye, Raleigh can imagine Yancy looking over him. “I can’t even imagine what I would do if I did something to hurt him.”

 

 

When he sleeps this time, Raleigh does not dream.

 

 

Raleigh wakes to darkness. The first thing he becomes aware of is an arm wrapped protectively around him, followed almost immediately by something warm pressed against the length of his back. Something warm that moves slightly, the motions rhythmic, as a warm gust of wind ghosts against the back of his neck. He turns his head slightly, and in the faint glow emanating from underneath the door he can see that it’s Yancy, fast asleep, face nuzzled into the crook of Raleigh’s shoulder.

Still sleep-drunk, Raleigh lifts a hand and runs it affectionately through the dirty blond locks atop the man’s head. To his addled perceptions, they’re surprisingly soft, and Raleigh finds himself wondering what it would be like to use them as a handhold as the other man rocks into him when they—

He cuts that chain of thought off at the root. The last thing he needs right now is to get uncomfortably hard. Instead, he shifts deeper into the older man’s grip and allows the gentle rocking of the other man’s chest to lull him back to sleep.

 

 

It was during their run next morning that Yancy brought it up.

“So,” the older man murmured between breaths, “we’re gonna be drifting soon, huh?”

Raleigh cocked his head, internally wondering what exactly his partner meant by the words. Raleigh, personally, was tentatively—nervously—excited to get to share something as intimate as his mind with the other man; after all, how many people could say that they’d done something like that? Even so, his partner’s words were obviously not meant as a question, despite being phrased as one, and Yancy’s tone lacked any real indication as to whether the older ranger thought of this as a good thing or not.

“Seems like it,” Raleigh offered back, keeping his response neutral as well. Neither of them spoke for a time, completing a full lap with only the sounds of their breathing—which had, at some point, Raleigh noted, synced up—and their footfalls to keep them company. Raleigh, personally, didn’t mind; he found silence comfortable, and silences with Yancy doubly so. He let his mind go blank, not needing to keep track of the other man as they’d grown so accustomed to running together that Raleigh almost instinctively knew where the older ranger was in relation to himself at any given point. As they passed the entrance once again, though, Yancy spoke up, drawing Raleigh’s focus onto him.

“It’s just, drifting requires trust, right?”

Oh.

“Do you not trust me?” Raleigh hated how insecure, how _young_ , his voice sounded when he asked the question.

“That’s not what I meant, kid,” Yancy sighs, head dropping forward slightly, rocking gently from side to side with the rhythm of their footfalls. Raleigh can see his eyebrows crease together in thought out of the corner of his eye. After a moment of silence, the older blond continues.

“I trust you, Rals. I do. It’s just,” he looks over at the younger pilot, and Raleigh can’t help but feel the older man is trying to convey some sort of meaning without saying it, “sometimes… sometimes I feel like I don’t know you that well. And that you don’t know me that well, either. Just, hear me out, okay,” he adds when Raleigh opens his mouth to retort. “I feel like I know you, Rals—as a person. But what I don’t know is where you came from. Yes, you’ve told me about your past, how your mom and sister died, but you have _told_ me about it. You never told me about what you did, how it made you feel, what your favorite memories of them are… Because, kid, when we drift, that’s what I’m gonna be seeing—what I’m gonna be _living_.”

There’s a pause during which Raleigh doesn’t speak up, because Yancy’s eyes are still full of meaning and the older man is chewing on his lip, a tell, Raleigh has learned by now, that the other man wants to say something.

“I’m not any better, though.”

The words float over to Raleigh, and he cocks his head to the side in surprise. Yancy’s mouth curls at the corner into a small grin.

“I’m really not, kid. I haven’t told you how I got here, what my childhood was like—hell, I haven’t even told you yet that I’m adopted.”

This makes Raleigh blink in surprise.

“You’re adopted?”

Yancy just laughs at him, the sound lighthearted.

“See? This is what I mean. And, y’know, I don’t think stuff like that’s a big deal, but it’s still just… I don’t know, something about me, I guess. And I want you to know all of that before we go into the drift, so that there’s no surprises. And I’d like it,” Yancy looks trails off, gaze going down to the ground in front of him before he continues, “I’d like it if you were willing to do the same thing, though I understand if you don’t want to.”

Raleigh keeps running without speaking right away, letting the older man’s words run through his mind. From a technical, logical standpoint, what Yancy is saying makes sense. After all, surprises in the drift are what push people out of alignment, what could get people killed. So, it makes sense for them to share their lives—their memories, their emotional baggage—with each other beforehand, even if the knowledge of it only helps to dull the eventual _experience_ slightly; it could be the difference between a successful trial run and an abject failure.

However, there’s another part of Raleigh that is less-than eager. After all, Raleigh’s never really, well, had someone to talk to about any of this before. His parents had been both the source of much of his baggage, or that which they did not themselves cause they carries as well. He’d never had an older sibling to talk to, even when he was in foster homes—any of the older kids tended to ignore him—and Jazmine…

A wave of grief washes over him when he thinks of his sister, far too young, too innocent, to even have time to imagine a world in which their family wasn’t the small, snowy dream it must’ve seemed to be from her perspective. Raleigh’s chest tightens at the thought, and his limbs trying to curl in on themselves, causing his steps to falter for a moment before he finds his rhythm again, almost falling into the man beside him.

Huh. Maybe talking about this would be good for him. Yancy is giving him a worried look when Raleigh finally opens his mouth to speak.

“Yeah, I think that’d be good. When were you thinking?”

The worry abruptly vanishes from the older man’s features, to be replaced with a hopeful openness that makes Raleigh’s heart skip a beat at how _beautiful_ it is. He has a moment to think that Yancy looks _really_ good when he’s smiling—dimples flashing—before the other ranger is speaking.

“Probably after breakfast. Figured we could find an unused classroom if you wanted, or I, uh, I know a spot for a private conversation.”

As Raleigh opens his mouth to speak, a bark sounds throughout the track. He blinks, distracted, then tries again, only to have another bark fill the space. At this point, Yancy is trying to hide his snickers in his hand, though he’s somehow managing to keep pace with Raleigh.

“Y-you okay there, Rals?” Yancy asks through his fingers, smile stretching all the way to his eyes and making them sparkle in mirth.

“Screw you, Yance,” Raleigh retorts, ears hot. The barking picks back up, and Raleigh can only think of one dog in the entire fucking building, so when he slows to a stop and turns around, he’s unsurprised to see Max chasing them down, woofing happily as he waddles towards them. The blond makes a note to himself to tell Chuck to stop sneaking the poor pup scraps from the table, that he’s going to make his dog another statistic in the childhood obesity epidemic. Of course, he doubts the redhead is going to listen, considering Chuck loves Max more than, well, pretty much anyone, and Raleigh can’t imagine anything for the lucky dog other than a future of being spoiled rotten.

Max finally reaches the two rangers, jumping on their shins happily, tongue lolling as he yips and snuffles at their ankles. Raleigh reaches down and lifts the puppy off the track, turning him over and scratching his belly as Max leans forward to try and lick at his face. Yancy comes up beside them, panting from laughing and running at the same time, and joins in, scratching the little bundle of energy behind the ears.

“Oi, unhand my dog!”

Raleigh looks up and spots Chuck running towards them. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Yancy do the same, and he spares a thought wondering if the two of them moving so synchronously looks both as creepy and as adorable in reality as it does in his mind’s eye.

“You were s’pposed to follow him back, morons, not abduct him,” Chuck huffs when he finally reaches them. Raleigh notices that the kid isn’t even out of breath, despite having run almost the length of the track to reach them, and he makes a mental note to ask Chuck when he’s been sneaking off for cardio workouts. “Now, get yer asses in gear. Mako’s waiting.”

_That_ gets Raleigh’s attention. He looks up again from where he’d resumed tickling Max’s belly.

“Mako?” he asks incredulously.

“Awake before ten?” Yancy finishes his thought.

Chuck simply shrugs at them both. “Said she wanted to get on an earlier sleep schedule. Something about acclimating to the Academy’s schedule or whatever. Who cares, just come get breakfast. You’re late.”

Raleigh opens his mouth to argue, but then he catches sight of the clock over the door and snaps it back shut so quickly his teeth clack together.

“Holy shit,” Yancy breathes, voicing Raleigh’s thoughts for the second time in as many moments. “How’d it get to be nine?”

“That’s what happens when you arseholes sleep in until fuckin’ seven,” Chuck drawls over his shoulder, turning to leave. “Now c’mon, I’m fuckin’ starving. C’mon, Max.”

And, before Raleigh can protest that, no, they’d actually woken up at their normal time—well, normal for Raleigh; Yancy, he’d found, was only liable to rouse with an alarm or if Raleigh shook him awake or both—Max jumps out of his arms, stumbles for a second as he gets his bearings, and then takes off after Chuck’s retreating form.

Raleigh shoots Yancy a look.

“Don’t give me that,” Yancy smirks back. “You’re the older brother in this little family, you deal with him.”

Raleigh just scoffs as he sets off towards the door, knowing Yancy will follow him. “Right, _I’m_ the older brother that has to deal with the demanding, annoying younger sibling.”

“I heard that!” comes Chuck’s indignant shout from ahead of them, but they both ignore it.

“So what does that make you, then?” Raleigh challenges the older man.

“The cool gay uncle, obviously,” Yancy replies without missing a beat.

“You realize that means that you’re the cool gay uncle who’s dating his nephew then, right?” Raleigh fires back, trying to keep a straight face.

He fails when Yancy chokes, his entire head and neck, even his upper arms, flushing a bright red.

 

 

Yancy’s “spot” turns out to be on the roof. _Of course it’s the fucking roof_ , Raleigh thinks to himself. And, of course, Yancy failed to mention that, since it’s on the roof—which is to say, on the top of a very tall building in the middle of fucking Nowhere, Alaska—it’s _cold._ Thankfully, it’s not too windy, although there is a constant deluge of snow that falls nearly straight down almost constantly. Raleigh’s breath puffs out ahead of him as he scales the last ladder, hands so cold that he’s lost feeling in his fingertips.

“Y-Y-Yance,” he gets out through chattering teeth, “it’s f-f- _fucking_ _cold_ up here, man.”

“Trust me, Rals,” is the only answer he gets, and Raleigh hugs his arms closer to his sides and shoves his hands into his armpits. “It’s right up here.”

Less than thirty seconds later, Yancy leads Raleigh around the edge of a large domed structure that reveals what looks like a blister of metal rising out of the roof. As they get closer, Raleigh notices that one of its edges touches the dome, and that Yancy is making a beeline for the door labeled in large, block lettering “EMERGENCY HATCH”. After the door is wrestled open and they hurry inside, Raleigh finds himself standing in what looks like a cut-down version of LOCCENT, with its wall of windows and computers covering almost every available surface. When the screens and monitors whir to life as Yancy fiddles with power switches on the wall, muttering to himself about heaters, he can’t help but think that maybe that’s exactly what this is.

“What is this place?” he eventually asks over Yancy’s mumbled cursing. He doesn’t get an answer until the other blond makes a soft “ah-ha!” and flicks a switch, fans whirring to life in the background as warm air blows from several vents along the wall. Raleigh shuffles to the nearest vent and relishes the way his fingers sting and prickle as blood begins to flow once again.

“Back before they got the drift simulators programmed, they needed a way to teach pilots to work in Jaegers,” Yancy explains, gesturing at the monitors scattered across the room. “So they built a Jaeger—same model as Brawler Yukon, I think—and would stick the pilots in her in there,” he gestures at the bank of dark windows, beyond which Raleigh imagines is a cathedral like the one found in the Hong Kong and Lima Shatterdomes, “and then they’d pretty much let them run around and fuck shit up and try to get coordinated without killing themselves. Once they cobbled the simulators together, they got rid of that real quick. Herc can probably tell you about it some time, if you ask nicely enough.”

“Yeah,” Raleigh draws the word out, “I think I’ll pass.”

He notices Yancy pulling a bag from underneath his jacket—the bastard had shown up wearing one when they met up then looked at Raleigh like he was insane for not doing so as well—and taking a thermos out of it in addition to several packages wrapped in plastic.

“What’s that?” he asks, unable to keep his curiosity contained. The question gets him a shy smile.

“Just some sandwiches I made. Had to sneak into the kitchen, though, and the staff weren’t too happy when they found out. It’s just ham and cheese, but I figured it’d be better than nothing in case we get hungry.”

“And in there?” Raleigh nods his head at the thermos. Instead of answering directly, though, Yancy’s smile broadens as he unscrews the cap and pours some of the steaming liquid within into a cup. The smell hits Raleigh’s nose almost immediately, and he reaches forward to reverently sip at the brown liquid he’s handed.

“How did you get hot cocoa out here?” he whispers, words tapering off into a moan when he takes a tentative sip.

“I know a guy,” is all Yancy tells him, even when Raleigh reminds him that they’re going to be drifting together inside of a week so it’s pointless to not share. They settle together, Yancy joining Raleigh beside the air vent, cups of hot chocolate clasped in cold fingers, breath crystallizing in the air until the heat kicks up the temperature a few degrees. The silence is comfortable, as it usually is between them. Raleigh knows Yancy is going to speak eventually, just as Yancy undoubtedly knows that Raleigh will be doing the same at some point, so there will be plenty of words to fill the silence later. When Yancy does start speaking, his words are soft, unhurried, and Raleigh finds himself leaning towards the other man as the words surround him.

“I don’t know who my birthparents were,” Yancy explains. “I only know that they named me, because my parents got it off of the back of a photograph they sent along with me. My parents adopted me because they wanted children but hadn’t been able to have any of their own. Pretty standard stuff, really. Anyway, we lived in Sausalito, just outside of San Francisco,” Raleigh can’t help the breath that he sucks in through his teeth in sympathy, though Yancy seems to ignore it, “and, I mean, it wasn’t like I had a bad childhood or anything. It was a nice area. The people were nice, the beach wasn’t too far away, and San Fran was just over the bridge if we ever got bored.

“My parents didn’t actually tell me I was adopted until I figured out something was wrong in ninth grade. Actually, it’s kinda stupid that it took me that long, but, I mean, I was a kid, so, y’know, whatever right?” Yancy lets out a humorless chuckle before he continues. “I figured it out because we had a genetics unit in biology and we were talking about recessive and dominant traits. When we got to hair color, my teacher made it really clear that blond hair was recessive, so both parents had to donate a blond gene, but that red hair—which my mom had, by the way—was also recessive. When I asked how my mom could’ve given birth to me, then, everyone in the class went really quiet because, I mean, what do you even say to that? Anyway, I came home in tears and asked my mom how it was possible. I mean, genetically, even if she slept with someone other than my dad, it just…didn’t add up. Anyway, that was when she and dad sat me down and showed me the adoption records and everything. They explained that they wanted kids but that mom was sterile because of something she got as a kid, and they said they loved me and that I was _their_ son, even if I wasn’t biologically theirs.”

“How did you take it?” Raleigh asked, unable to keep his mounting curiosity quiet. Yancy made a huffing sort of sound, wry smirk pulling at one side of his mouth.

“Not well, actually. I didn’t trust them for about a year after that. I think they got it, though. It just… took some getting used to. I think my mom nearly cried in happiness when I called her mom again, though. It, uh, it probably helped that my parents were both in law. I don’t know if they were lawyers, exactly, but they were both involved with it. Anyway, yeah, That probably helped because they worked cases for this LGBT-activist group in San Fran, so, y’know, when I was sixteen and I figured out that I was gay—or, I guess, finally became okay with it; I think I figured it out when I was probably about thirteen?—it wasn’t really that scary coming out to them, and the idea that I had someone who would probably be accepting of me was probably one of the things that made me accept them again. Of course they were okay with it—I’d’ve honestly been surprised if they weren’t, though looking back that was kinda arrogant of me to think because, y’know, some people are okay with it only so long as it’s not _their kid_ , right? Anyway, yeah, like I said, they were cool with it, even told me that if I wanted to bring a boyfriend by to meet them they’d promise not to embarrass me too badly. I actually took them up on that, once.”

Yancy’s smirk rearranges itself into a genuine grin that fills Raleigh’s chest with a warmth he knows isn’t due to anything he’s ingesting. He takes another sip of his cocoa, allowing the warm, rich liquid to slide delightfully down his throat and add to the heat in his belly. However, before Raleigh’s eyes, the expression turns brittle and eventually cracks.

“Then, Trespasser hit.”

Raleigh’s hand darts forward before he can stop himself, clasping Yancy’s jacket-covered forearm, offering support. The action earns him a grateful, albeit small and sad, smile.

“My parents were on the Golden Gate Bridge, on their way to a meeting in town, when it happened. They called me as soon as they realized that a Kaiju—that _something_ —was ripping the bridge apart. I picked up just in time to hear them tell me to stay inside and that they loved me. Then, there was screaming, I guess metal breaking or something, and then this… this _sound_. God, kid, it sounded like death and hate all mixed into the most terrifying thing you can imagine. Then there was some more screaming, then the line went dead. I was so fucking scared.

“I kind of listened. I went to my neighbor’s house, the Jamison’s. They were a really nice family that were close friends with ours, and when I got there they had the news on and… I guess in that moment, I knew, I told them my parents had been on the bridge, and they said they would take care of me. And they did. They kept me out of the foster system, helped me take care of the house and everything. I don’t know what I would’ve done if it hadn’t been for them. We got lucky, though. Sausalito was upwind of the fallout from the nukes they used to kill Trespasser, so we didn’t have to evacuate. At least, not then. I think I heard that they’ve had to since I came here because of Blue poisoning, but other than that, yeah, no, we got really lucky.

“As soon as the PPDC started up, though, I joined. I was 18 at the time, only a month away from being 19. All those guys you hear about? The Gage twins? Herc and Scott Hansen? The Jessops? I graduated with them. They just found each other before, well,” he trails off, glancing shyly at Raleigh, “before I found you. I didn’t want to go into J-Tech or K-Science, I wanted—still want—to pilot. So I waited. I told myself that either I’d find someone and get what I wanted, or I wouldn’t and I guess I’d be miserable. Either way, I’m glad I found you, Raleigh.”

The aforementioned blond smiles at Yancy’s full use of his given name, and he leans forward to plant a soft kiss on the older ranger’s lips.

“Thank you for sharing that with me, Yance. I’m sorry for what you had to go through. I wish I’d have found you sooner. I’m sorry you had to wait so long for me.”

Yancy smiles against his lips.

“It was worth it, kiddo. Now, come on. Your turn. And don’t leave out the gushy details this time around, alright?”

Raleigh laughs lightly, then turns and snuggles back into the other man’s chest, practically purring when he feels arms wrap around him securely, helping to keep the waning cold at bay. He takes another sip of his drink, clears his throat, and settles in to tell his story.

Somehow, telling it this time doesn’t hurt as much. Maybe it’s true, he finds himself musing as he speaks. Maybe time heals all wounds.

Or maybe, another, hopelessly romantic, part of him thinks, it’s just Yancy.


	8. It Swallows Me Whole

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Boundaries are set, some are redefined, and discoveries are made. Raleigh and Yancy get to drift for the first time.
> 
> Chapter title comes from "Secret" by OceanLab: " _I have a secret / And it's hell trying to keep it / It tears right through my heart / And it swallows me whole_."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry you guys (the 59 of you that have subscribed to this story (HOLY SHIT 59????)) that this took so long to get out. I had to work [some other stuff](/series/70291) out of my system first, and, so, as a reward for waiting oh-so-patiently, I have several gifts for you guys in this chapter. 
> 
> First and foremost is the fact that it's almost twice as long as normal. Secondly, this is chapter contains some events/details that a lot of you have been waiting for quite anxiously. Finally, there may or may not ~~there totally is~~ be a smidgen of smut in this chapter.
> 
> Also, instead of working on anything else, I'm charging right into the next chapter on this baby. When you get to the end, you'll probably understand why.
> 
> Beta Credit: [Airwing](/users/Airwing) (I wrote this at 3 in the morning so please forgive any errors you find; my beta is only human, after all)

Yancy’s lips are heaven, Raleigh decides.

They’re lying on their joined beds, both still fully clothed, Raleigh on top of Yancy. The older ranger has the fingers of one hand buried in the bunched fabric of the sweater he’d gotten Raleigh when the younger had complained about the academy getting too cold now that it’s November. The other hand is busy tangling itself in Raleigh’s hair, occasionally tugging lightly, the action sending a thrill of pleasure down the younger blond’s spine that makes him suck in a hiss through his teeth. Yancy swallows the sound, and Raleigh makes another just to feel the older man’s mouth caressing his own so gently, so slowly, that Raleigh thinks he might weep just from the sheer tenderness of the action. Yancy’s lips are soft, supple, and just slightly chapped from the cold, and the contrast of sensation is enough to make Raleigh’s own lips tingle pleasantly. Behind his closed eyelids, he allowed himself to become lost in the sensations and memories.

The two of them had spent the majority of yesterday getting to know each other on a more personal level. They’d stayed in the old Jaeger Arena’s LOCCENT until they’d run out of hot chocolate and food, talking about their pasts, their favorite pastimes growing up, actually _growing up_ … Raleigh had never talked with anyone about easily half the things he’d told Yancy. He’d confessed to his partner how, after his sister had died, he felt like he’d been unnecessarily harsh on his parents—especially his mother—because a part of him had thought that they were, in some way, responsible, or, if nothing else, that they should’ve _been_ _there_ for him, the twelve-year-old who didn’t, _couldn’t_ , understand what it meant when his mother and father told him that his sister had gone away for good. He’d told Yancy of the child who had begged and begged the doctors in the hospital to just _do something why aren’t any of you doing anything you need to help her she’s my sister my baby sister you **have to** **help her**_.

Raleigh had told Yancy how he’d always wanted an older brother once he’d become one himself, someone who he could just lean on sometimes and trust to take care of him when everything seemed like too much, the way he’d done for Jazmine. He’d told Yancy how that feeling had intensified for a year and a half until, a few months after he’d turned fourteen, he’d come to accept that he was the only one who was going to take care of him because his parents sure as hell weren’t. However, he’d confessed, he still wished he’d had an older brother, if only because then he wouldn’t have had to be so horribly _alone_ for those three years, and maybe that way Raleigh would’ve had someone who would’ve accompanied him through the system or kept him out of it altogether. Or, perhaps, their father wouldn’t have left in the first place—even though Raleigh didn’t _actually_ think that would’ve happened, it was still an idyllic fantasy onto which he held.

There’s a light smacking sound as Yancy pulls back, and Raleigh whines at the loss of sensation, head canting forward slightly to chase after the older man. When he only manages to plant an open-mouthed kiss on Yancy’s neck, he opens his eyes and attempts to pout, but the expression drops from his face when he sees the way Yancy’s looking at him. The older blond’s gaze is hot, heavy, and Raleigh squirms under its intensity.

“What?” the younger ranger asks defensively, sitting up slightly, the motion causing him to rock back onto the distinctly hard bulge in Yancy’s sweats. A moan bubbles up in Raleigh’s throat, but he swallows it back down.

“Nothin’, kid,” Yancy murmurs, almost reverently, eyes not moving from Raleigh’s as he lowers the hand that had been tangling itself in Raleigh’s hair to run a finger down the side of the younger ranger’s face. “You’re just so beautiful.”

Raleigh blushes, turning his head to the side to dodge the incoming caress. “Shut up. ‘M not.”

Yancy laughs breathlessly at that, shaking his head, fondness entering his gaze.

“You have no idea, do you, kid?”

The words trigger something in Raleigh’s memory as Yancy reaches up to place his lips on the younger blond’s again without waiting for an answer: something that he’d buried away until now. He hadn’t been willfully ignoring it, per se, but it had somehow slipped from between his fingers before, and now it slams back into his full force. He turns his head slightly and leans up again to disengage, brows furrowing.

“W-wait, Yance, _wait_ , hold on,” he pants, placing a palm on the older ranger’s chest when Yancy pushes himself up further. The action gets him a decidedly confused look, the crease between Yancy’s brows deepening. An instant later, though, it smoothes out, and one of Yancy’s hands covers Raleigh’s, the other still gripping the fabric of his sweater, their limbs joining them heart-to-heart.

“What’s wrong, kiddo? You wanna stop?”

“No, no,” Raleigh adds quickly, shaking his head, “it’s just. What you said. Before. What did you mean?”

Some part of Raleigh’s mind thinks that Yancy looks adorable when he’s confused. He had the sudden impulse to kiss away the furrows in the older man’s forehead, but he checks the motions, though only just barely.

“Uh, kid? You’re gonna have to be more specific than ‘before’ if you want me t’know what you’re talkin’ about.”

“When we first moved in. That night,” Raleigh clarifies. “You said something about, uh, how long you’d wanted to kiss me? Or something?”

As soon as the words come out of Raleigh’s mouth, he realizes that he’s not the only one that’s been willfully ignoring this topic. Yancy turns _beet_ red, the older man’s hands both disengaging from where they’d been touching Raleigh to cover his own face, hiding it from view. At the same time, Yancy rolls his whole body onto his side, the action almost throwing Raleigh from on top of him, and then he buries his face in the pillows. Raleigh can see that the other man isn’t just blushing on his face, but that the red stain is creeping down the skin of his neck as well.

“ _Really_? You’re gonna bring that up _now_? Do we really have to?” Yancy asks, voice muffled. Raleigh almost laughs at Yancy’s antics. Almost. Except, now, he actually-kind-of-really wants an answer.

“Yeah, Yance. We do. So, what did you mean?” he asks the older man, not relenting.

When Yancy doesn’t answer, doesn’t move, just continues to flush all across his body—Raleigh thinks the strip of exposed hip where the other ranger’s shirt had ridden up is starting to turn red, too—Raleigh gives voice to the thought that’s started bouncing incessantly around his skull.

“Did... did you want to become friends with me just because you wanted to sleep with me?” he asks, voice low.

“What?” Yancy starts, tone of voice indicating his surprise more effectively than the way he whips his head around, hands dropping away. “No!”

Raleigh just levels him with a stare. After a few moments, guilt washes over the older man’s features.

“Okay, so not really. I thought you were cute, yeah, but I didn’t want to _sleep_ with you. I mean, I knew who you were. Everyone did, really: Baby Fish, the seventeen-year-old recruit who somehow won over The Troll.”

Raleigh smacks Yancy in the chest reprovingly, biting off a giggle despite the seriousness of the situation.  Yancy feigns injury for a moment, smiling lightly before he sobers and continues.

“Look, Rals, I just... I never imagined any of,” he waves his hands between them, “of _this_ happening. I wanted to be your friend that day because I wanted to get to know you, and, yeah, to be fair, you being cute didn’t hurt anything. I even promised myself that since, y’know, you’re not technically _legal_ yet that I wouldn’t let anything happen between us even if you somehow _were_ interested—which, by the way, I thought was impossible. But, then, the closer we got...” Yancy trails off, shaking his head and not looking Raleigh in the eye.

“The closer we got, the harder it became to not _want_ something to happen. And then we got paired up and you kissed me and, well,” Yancy looks back up at the other blond, shrugging his shoulders, “here we are now. But, _no,_ Rals, I didn’t talk to you that day because I wanted to _sleep_ with you. Jesus Christ, kid, _no_. I mean,” Raleigh must make a face as something cold drops in his stomach at the denial, because Yancy backpedals quickly, “I do want that _someday_ , but not yet, okay? Not until you’re ready.”

Raleigh lets himself smile, then.

“Promise?”

Yancy snorts, rolling back over so that Raleigh is once more sitting in his lap, arms moving up to clasp at the younger blond’s hips. “Promise what? That I want to sleep with you someday, or that I didn’t become friends with you just because I thought you were cute?”

Raleigh laughs, grinning wickedly.

“Yes.”

The older man rolls his eyes at the younger’s antics.

“I swear, kid... fine, yes, I promise, okay?”

“Okay,” Raleigh echoes, swooping down to claim the other man’s heavenly lips once more.

 

 

Two days later, Raleigh explodes at Yancy.

He’d told the other man that he wanted to keep things above the waist, yes, but that doesn’t mean he wants to be completely _celibate_.

At first, it had been almost endearing. Their second morning together—though Raleigh likes to think of it as their first, since their _actual_ first morning together had been spent asleep and had involved nightmares on Raleigh’s part—before Yancy had mentioned his plan for them to get closer, the older man had come out of the bathroom after his shower in nothing but a towel. Raleigh’s mouth had immediately gone dry at the sight: planes of taut muscles and beads of glistening water that flowed from tantalizingly downward, gathering into rivulets that flowed through the valleys between each ridge before disappearing teasingly into the towel. The offending garment was slung low enough on Yancy’s hips that the defined V of his hips nearly met, the thin treasure trail of dark-blond hair that descended from the older man’s navel broadening slightly into a smattering of curls just before reaching the cloth border. However, as Raleigh had sat, mouth agape, heat rising in his belly and face because _holy shit Yancy was beautiful_ , the older man had looked up and spotted the other blond staring at him. Yancy had blushed slightly, mumbled a quick, “Sorry Rals, forgot,” before he’d grabbed some random clothes from the wardrobe and shuffled back to the bathroom with them, slamming the door behind him.

Ever since then, Yancy had made sure to bring his clothes into the bathroom with him, and had even gone to the effort of going into the bathroom to change into sweats and a t-shirt or tank top before bed each night. And, after four days of this, Raleigh was ready to just blow up at the other man.

So he did.

Yancy comes out of the bathroom that morning, fully clothed, still toweling his hair dry, skin flushed red from the heat of the shower, and calls out, tone joking, “All yours, kid. Tried to be quick so that there was enough hot water for your, he waggles his eyebrows, “private time.”

For some reason, the joke rubs Raleigh the wrong way. It’s not even the words themselves or the fact that his partner is having a laugh at his expense. No, it’s the fact that Yancy seems to have decided _for_ him what’s appropriate and what’s not, and the older man seems to have no qualms about this decision at all. The joke is simply the proverbial spark.

“For god’s sake, Yance, I’m not… I’m not fucking nun, alright?” Raleigh yells, Yancy’s soft laughter cutting off the second the words leave the younger blond’s mouth.

“I—” the older man stutters, “y—what? I didn’t say—”

“I’m not talking about _that_ ,” Raleigh’s all-out shouting now, hands waving erratically as if he can cast away their previous conversation because, _really_ , it’s irrelevant. “I’m talking about the fact that you’ve been treating me like I’m this… this _thing_ that needs to be protected or something!”

“Rals,” Yancy breathes, words slow and measured, towel falling to the ground as he lifts his hands—though whether it’s in defense or surrender, Raleigh’s not sure, “I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about, kid. Could we maybe assume for a sec’ that I’ve lost all my memories or something and try to explain to me what _exactly_ you mean?”

Frustration tightens Raleigh’s gut, and he growls lowly. “Ever since I said I wanted to keep things above the waist, you’ve been treating me like I’m this pure little virginal flower or some shit. You won’t change in front of me, you take all your clothes into the bathroom with you before you shower; you won’t even sleep in the same bed as me unless you’re completely covered!”

“Well, to be fair, Rals,” Yancy points out timidly, hands falling slightly until they’re in front of him at chest level, palms forward, eyes slightly wide and trained on Raleigh’s own, “you _are_ a virg—”

“ _That’s not the point_ ,” Raleigh cuts him off, voice coming from between clenched teeth. “The _point_ is that you never _asked_ what I was okay with. And if you’d _bothered_ , I would’ve told you that I’m fine with us changing in the same room, with us being naked near each other; with a _lot_ of things, actually. I—I just…”

He brings his hands to his hair, tugging at the blond strands, the pulling sensation on his scalp helping to ground him, to pull his anger back. Raleigh closes his eyes, breathes deeply for a few moments then opens them again. Yancy has moved from his spot by the door to the edge of the bed, seemingly taking Raleigh’s self-calming attempts as permission to come closer. He’s still not sitting on the bed, though, the younger blond notes. Trying to push back the anger and frustration until they’re just an annoying, red feeling at the edge of his mind, he starts speaking again.

“I just wish you trusted me to tell you when it’s too much, like I did that first night, instead of just… doing it for me, okay? Unless this is as far as you’re willing to go right now,” he adds quickly, “but then you _have to tell me_ , okay? In the past four days, you’ve told me so much about yourself, but you haven’t told me _anything_ about how you feel about,” Raleigh drops a hand from his hair to gesture between them, “ _this_. About _us_.”

Yancy blinks at him once, twice, the action more considering than surprised, his hands falling to his lap as he slowly sits beside Raleigh on the bed.

“I thought you knew,” the older man breathes quietly.

“We’re not drifting yet, Yance,” Raleigh reminds him, a hint of amusement leaking into his voice as his other hand untangles itself from his scalp. Yancy shakes his head, looking down at his fingers where they’ve clasped themselves together.

“No, I know that kid, it’s just… I don’t know, I… Never mind. Look, Rals,” and then he’s looking Raleigh in the eye again, expression _heavy_ in a way that it almost makes Raleigh want to shrink back from its intensity, “I like you, okay? I like you a _lot_. And I don’t wanna fuck this up, don’t want to push you further than you’re willing to go. And I don’t _know_ how far that actually is, so, yeah, I shouldn’t’ve made that decision for you, you’re right,” he admits, ducking his head slightly but not breaking eye contact. “But I can’t read your mind either, alright? I had no idea you felt this way, or that you were okay with more. I thought that, since, y’know, you didn’t say anything, you were fine with where things were.”

Yancy reaches between them, taking Raleigh’s hands in his own. The older man’s palms are still warm from his shower, the spaces between his fingers slightly damp from holding the towel. Something thrums through the touch, something like lightning—hot and fast—that flashes across Raleigh’s mind and then is gone, leaving a glowing afterimage of warmth and residual light. He’s not quite sure what it is, if it’s a byproduct of their drift compatibility or simply _him_ and _Yancy_ , but, ultimately, he decides, it isn’t important. After the silence between them stretches for a few seconds, growing tauter with each of Raleigh’s heartbeats, the younger blond opens his mouth to speak, trying to translate the thoughts racing each other around his brain into something intelligible.

“I wouldn’t mind seeing you naked, Yance,” he says slowly, ponderously, weighing each word as he speaks it, “and I wouldn’t mind you seeing, y’know, me naked or anything. Not that I _need_ to see you naked, or vice versa, I just want you to know that I’m not opposed to the idea. And... if something happens, well, I mean... I’ll tell you if it’s too much, okay? Can you trust me to do that?”

Yancy looks at him, gaze serious, for perhaps all of three seconds before his face splits into a grin.

“Well gee, kid, if you wanted to see me nude that badly, all y’had to do was ask.”

The tension that’d been building in the air between them snaps into glittering fragments that drift lazily between them, invisible but still there, leaving a tingling sensation against Raleigh’s skin in their wake. He rolls his eyes and, unable to help himself, he laughs.

“ _So_ not the point, asshole,” he chuckles, punching Yancy on the arm. Hard. The older man pulls back with a cry of pain that may or may not be faked, pouting.

“You wound me, baby fish!”

“Oh my fucking—I told you not to call me that, Yance!”

A teasing grin.

“Whatever you say...”

“Don’t you dare—”

“Baby fish.”

With a cry that’s somewhere between a shout and a laugh, Raleigh launches himself at Yancy, their bodies colliding and rolling around on the bed as they wrestle for dominance, panting and cursing and laughter filling the room.

And if, later, they end up curled together, their shirts discarded at some point during the tussle, lips sealed together, hands and mouths roaming over expanses of hard, hot muscle, scratching, caressing, licking, and nipping, well.

Raleigh wasn’t complaining.

 

 

“So, I overheard m’dad talkin’ to the sim techs today,” Chuck tells them one day as they eat dinner. “You two drongos start sim time t’morrow.”

They’ve snuck their food out of the canteen—again, willfully ignoring the fact that it’s technically against regs—and are all sitting around Raleigh and Yancy’s room. It’s sort of become something of a new hangout spot for the four of them. Five, Raleigh muses, if you count Max; the bulldog puppy is currently sleeping against Chuck’s thigh, snoring and drooling on the redhead as Chuck gingerly maneuvers his food from his tray on the bed to his mouth, doing his best to not disturb the little ball of wrinkles. From his spot at the head of the bed, leaning against the wall, tucked into Yancy’s side, Raleigh nearly inhales his green beans in surprise. He coughs and sputters for a moment, Yancy pounding at his back sympathetically, before he manages to wheeze out, “You said it’d be at least a week!”

Chuck, of course, just rolls his eyes.

“No, moron, I said it’d _probably_ be _about_ a week,” he says, emphasizing his words with upward ticks of his eyebrows. “It’s been five days, so tomorrow makes six. Damn close to a week, if y’ask me. Besides,” he adds, smirking between Raleigh and Yancy, “I’d figure you two lovebirds would be ecstatic to get inside each others’ heads. Romance and soul sharing and all that shit.”

Mako, thankfully, chooses that moment to smack Chuck in the back of the head, murmuring a quick, quiet admonishment in Japanese at the redhead. Raleigh’s pretty sure he catches words for “personal” and “idiot,” but it’s too rapid-fire for him to be sure. Chuck, of course, damn him, just rolls his eyes and fires back another string of Japanese at the smaller girl. She scowls, but nods at him, which seems to surprise Chuck.

“Right then,” Chuck announces, turning back to Raleigh and Yancy. “‘M, ah,” he glances back at Mako, who glares at him, “‘m sorry for springing that on y’like that. We’re gonna, uh, we’ll just go back to my room or somethin’ let you two... do whatever it is you do.”

Mako picks up her tray as Chuck does the same, nudging Max as he does so. The puppy draws in a sudden snort of air when he wakes with a start.

“C’mon, Max,” Chuck intones, dropping his gaze to his dog, “let’s go. Apparently, _some people_ need some alone time to fuck each other’s brains—ow!” he finishes when Mako kicks him in the shin. She throws an apology over her shoulder as she drags Chuck from the room, the Australian teen still cursing at her in a mixture of English and Japanese.

“Well,” Raleigh hears Yancy murmur beside him, “that was odd.”

“Yeah,” Raleigh agrees, and even to him his voice sounds distant and far-off, thoughts a whirlwind in his mind. Tomorrow. It’s _tomorrow_. Somehow, he’d figured he’d feel more ready for this by now.

“Rals?” Yancy’s voice breaks through the maelstrom, and the younger blond shakes his head to push the storm back. “You okay? I thought you were excited for this?”

“Yeah, yeah, I am,” Raleigh reassures the older man, eyes fixed on his food, his appetite suddenly gone. “I just, I don’t know, I guess I thought we’d have more time to get used to the idea of sharing headspace? It’s just like, bam, wow, there it is, right there, right here, tomorrow. I guess I’m just kinda nervous?”

Yancy nudges him in the side with an elbow, and Raleigh looks up to find a concerned expression on the other man’s face.

“Rals, if this was too much, if you weren’t ready for us to do this—” he starts, but Raleigh quickly cuts him off.

“No. _No_ , Yancy, I’m good, alright? I just, I wasn’t expecting it to be so soon, y’know?”

“Are you sure?” the older blond asks him, concern still shining from his eyes. “I can tell Herc we’re not ready yet if it’s what you’d—”

“Yancy,” Raleigh interrupts him again, raising an eyebrow, “remember what I said about trusting me to tell you if it’s too much?”

Yancy at least has the decency to look sheepish.

“Yeah, kid, I remember.”

“Good,” Raleigh says, plainly, but then a thought occurs to him. “You’re not nervous, too, are you?”

Something passes behind Yancy’s eyes at the question, some emotion or thought that Raleigh can’t identify, before the older man’s smile blinds him.

“Sure, kid, but I guess that’s just ‘cause it’s, y’know, new and all. But, honestly?” He takes Raleigh’s hands in his own, lifting them from where the younger ranger had been fiddling with his utensils and bringing them towards him, placing a quick kiss on the exposed backs of Raleigh’s fingers.

“There’s no one else I’d rather have by my side.”

 

 

The day they drift together, Raleigh’s day starts with him finding Yancy already awake and just holding him as he sleeps. Truthfully, almost every day this past week has started with him in his partner’s arms, though this is the first time that the older man has been cognizant while doing it—that Raleigh knows of, that is. Regardless, when he wakes up, Raleigh finds himself wrapped in the familiar weight of Yancy’s limbs wrapped around him, but he also feels gentle kisses being placed at the nape of his neck.

“Morning sunshine,” Yancy breathes into his skin when Raleigh draws in a sudden breath through his nose in surprise. “How’d you sleep?”

Raleigh lets the breath out slowly, relishing in the feeling of Yancy’s hands as they run over his sides and back. He’d purposefully gone to bed last night without putting a shirt on exactly for this reason; not that he normally did, but he’d made sure he hadn’t put one on without thinking about it. Yancy’s fingertips dancing over his skin making something in him glow softly, like the coals of a fire, hot and slow.

“Great, actually. Excited.” He gets out, the last word cut off by a gasp and then a moan as one of Yancy’s hands wanders around to his chest and toys with his nipple.

“Mm, I’ll bet,” Yancy murmurs, and Raleigh can _hear_ the smirk in his voice, so he turns around slowly and plants his lips on the older man’s, kissing the smirk away. It’s surprisingly chaste, no tongue or intensity, just raw affection thrumming between them through the contact. Raleigh places one of his hands over the bare skin of Yancy’s chest, and— _oh_. Yancy’s not wearing a shirt, either. Raleigh could’ve sworn the older man was wearing one before. He pulls back from the kiss, surprised, and takes a moment to drink in the sight before him. He trails his fingers across the hard planes of muscle in front of him, allowing himself to delight in the shivers the contact draws out of Yancy, the way dragging his thumb over the hardened nubs of the other man’s nipples pulls a half-choked noise out of him.

“Do you want to shower together?”

The words tumble from Raleigh’s mouth, stuck in the air between them, and suddenly he’s not sure he can remember how to breathe.

Yancy seems to be having much the same problem.

“Are—are you sure, kid?” the older man asks, voice soft, though Raleigh can hear the faint note of hope hidden there.

Raleigh stops to actually _think_ about that for a moment. Does he really want this? If they shower together, it’s entirely possible that something will happen. They might not _fuck_ —largely because Raleigh knows he isn’t ready for that, anyway—but something else might still happen. Is he okay with that?

“Yeah,” he says, nodding as soon as he’s come to a decision. “Yeah. Really sure.”

Yancy surges forward, kissing him breathless, and this time it’s not chaste, it’s not soft and sweet, it’s hard and passionate and full of _want_. Raleigh almost buckles from the intensity of it.

And then he feels the molten outline of Yancy’s cock pressed against his thigh.

It flips some switch inside of him. The next thing he knows, he’s clawing desperately at the back of Yancy’s head, his neck, his shoulders, his hips, something, _anything_ to pull the man closer, to increase the contact between them. Raleigh’s entire body is suffused with _heat_ and _desire_ and he can’t get enough of Yancy _touching him_.

And then he’s cold, and Yancy is standing over him, smirking so sexily that Raleigh thinks it should be illegal. Slowly, almost teasingly, the older man loosens the drawstring of his tented sweats, then lets them fall from his hips. They get caught on the curve of his arousal on the way down—apparently, Raleigh realizes with a kind of wonder, he hadn’t been wearing underwear—and Yancy has to actually push the cotton barrier off his hips. Once done, the older man is left standing there, completely naked, hands at his sides, erect cock curving slightly up and to the right, an almost sheepish expression replacing his smirk.

To say that Raleigh goes nearly blind with _need_ , with _want_ , would be an understatement.  A more apt description would be to say that he _mauls_ the other man, tearing his own sweats and boxers from his body with such ferocity that his own hardness slaps back against his stomach. Then he’s launching himself towards his partner, almost knocking them over, and everything is a blur of hands and heat and mouths. The next thing Raleigh knows, they’re in the shower, and the hot water is cascading over their skin, and Yancy’s hand finally—finally—trails down to Raleigh’s aching cock.

The first touch is so electric that Raleigh is honestly surprised that he doesn’t come when the older man simply wraps his fingers around the younger’s length. He makes incoherent gasping noises, sucking the air from Yancy’s lungs, panting harshly through the pleasure. And then his partner actually starts to _move_ , palm catching sinfully on the head, thumb trailing under the flared ridge in a way that toes the line between _too much_ and _not nearly fucking enough_.

Somehow, in his near-incoherent state, Raleigh manages to get his hand on Yancy’s cock.

It’s only the second time he’s held another man’s erection, but Yancy’s feels like so much _more_ than Jason’s ever had: thicker, longer, more _real_ , pulsing in his hand in time with the erratic heartbeat beneath the fingers of Raleigh’s other hand. Through the haze of pleasure surrounding him Raleigh manages to stroke his hand up and down Yancy’s shaft and over the head, trying to do to the older man what he knows he enjoys doing to himself. His partner’s gasp is all the confirmation he needs that he’s on the right track.

“Oh fuck, Rals,” the words fall from between Yancy’s lips in a constant stream of near-filth, “so fucking perfect, so fucking beautiful, fuck—ah—yes, fuck, just like that, oh fuck, baby—”

In the end, it’s the pet name that does him in, the word—so casual, yet so intimate—sounds so different, so _loving_ , leaving Yancy’s mouth. Raleigh comes with a full-body spasm and a cry that the older man swallows down, whimpering as he paints Yancy’s torso with his release and aftershocks course through his body, making him twitch helplessly in the other man’s grip. When he finally calms down enough to be aware of his surroundings again, Yancy has led Raleigh down so that they’re sitting against the wall of the shower, strong arms encircling his shoulders, the older man’s dick still a burning weight in his hand.

“You okay, baby?” Yancy asks him, and Raleigh is sure his partner _knows_ how that word affects him; his spent cock gives a feeble twitch.

“Yeah,” Raleigh manages to pant out. “Yeah, I’m... I... That was fucking fantastic, Yance.”

When the older man gives a superior smirk, Raleigh gives the cock in his hand a squeeze, drawing a moan out of the other man. However, a thought races across Raleigh’s mind, and the phrase, ‘ _In for a penny_...’ drifts along after it before he makes up his mind and shifts in Yancy’s grip.

“Kid, what’re you—?” Yancy starts, but cuts himself off with a moan as Raleigh wraps his lips around the older man’s cockhead.

It tastes different that Raleigh expected. Musky, sort of like skin and water—though he imagines that part is from the shower—but most of all, it tastes like _Yancy_. He experimentally draws his tongue over the other ranger’s slit, which earns him a loud, appreciative groan and the bitter, salty taste of Yancy’s pre-come exploding on his tongue.

Raleigh knows in that instant that he’s completely addicted to this, to drawing those sounds out of his partner. So he does it again. Only this time, he pushes forward, drawing more of Yancy’s dick into his mouth, and _sucks_. He gets another loud groan for his efforts, though the sound quickly devolves into a pained hiss when Raleigh gets about halfway down and Yancy whispers harshly, “Teeth, baby, watch the teeth.”

Raleigh draws back, opens his jaw wider, and tries one more time. This time, he get about two thirds of the other man’s dick in his mouth, tongue running along the underside, before the swollen head taps the back of his throat and he gags. Yancy nearly _screams_ as Raleigh feels the muscles at the back of his throat work furiously, trying to push the offending object _out_. The younger blond isn’t sure what it is—whether it’s the sounds Yancy’s making, or the fact that it’s _Yancy’s cock_ he’s gagging on—but he’s hard again in an instant.

“ _Holy fuck_ , kid,” Yancy moans, eyes looking straight through to Raleigh’s soul. “Keep that up and I won’t last very fucking long. Jesus _fuck_.”

So Raleigh does it again. And again. And again. At some point, Yancy’s hands fall to his head and tug lightly at the blond strands there, drawing an appreciative moan from the teen that the older man must misinterpret, because Yancy pulls his hands back as if he’s been burned. Raleigh spares a moment to grab them and tangle the older man’s fingers in his hair, trying to communicate with his eyes that this is okay. Yancy seems to get the idea, because soon he’s guiding Raleigh’s head up and down on his dick, fingers curling and pulling at his scalp, providing a perfect knife’s edge on which Raleigh can balance himself. His hands fall to his own weeping cock and he starts fisting it rapidly.

“Oh fuck, baby,” Yancy breathes, “gonna come, what do you want me to—”

Raleigh pulls off long enough to interrupt the older man and say, voice _wrecked_ , “ _Give it to me_ ,” and then he’s bobbing up and down as fast as he can, sucking for all he’s worth, tongue working at Yancy’s cockhead and teasing at the slit on each upstroke and—

And then Yancy does scream—screams Raleigh’s name—and pushes his dick deep into the teen’s mouth, unloading. Raleigh tries valiantly to swallow as his second orgasm sweeps over him, but after the first shot it’s simply too much, and the older man’s seed dribbles down his chin as he tries in vain to keep up through the haze of his own pleasure.

When Yancy’s exhausted himself, he slumps further to the floor, eyes distant, though they become decidedly more heated when Raleigh manages to prop himself in his lap and swallows what little of Yancy’s release is left in his mouth with a noisy gulp. The flavor is... odd, he decides, though not horrible. Salty, yet sweet, yet also something strange he’s never encountered anywhere else. He’s not sure if he’d like it if it wasn’t from Yancy.

“Fuck, kid,” Yancy breathes, propping an arm around Raleigh’s shoulders and wrapping the other around Raleigh’s waist, pulling the younger man closer. “Where the hell did _that_ come from?”

Raleigh shrugs, feels his face heating. “I figured, we’re about to share brains, so I’m probably gonna experience you having sex or something, right? So, I dunno, I guess, I just… I wanted something before the drift. Something that I know is from me, and only me.”

He looks down at his hands where they’re clasping the limb Yancy has wrapped around his midsection. “I know, it sounds stupid, but—”

Yancy tilts his head back and cuts him off with a kiss.

“Nah, not stupid. Makes perfect sense,” the older ranger says with a smile when he pulls back, face positively glowing with happiness. “I’m glad you did it.”

He glances up at where the water is pounding around them, getting progressively cooler in stages. Raleigh follows his gaze, and remembers, oh yeah, they came in here to shower, didn’t they?

“Guess we should get clean, huh?” Raleigh asks, to which Yancy just laughs.

“Yeah, kid, I guess so. Big day ahead of us.”

 

 

When they leave to head for the simulator, Chuck is  waiting for them in the hallways, looking some strange combination of smug and pissed off, circles under his eyes.

“Thank you, alarm clock one and alarm clock two, for waking me up with the lovely sounds of your fucking this morning,” he grumbles. “About sodding time.”

Raleigh feels his face heat, and he can see Yancy blushing out of the corner of his eye, the older blond looking resolutely at the floor.

“Sorry, Chuck—” Raleigh begins, but Chuck waves his hand and cuts him off.

“Just, next time, I dunno, gag him or something, eh Ray? I’m going back to bed.”

The redhead turns and slams his door behind him, dismissal clear, leaving the two rangers gaping after him.

“Did he just tell us—”

“Yup.” Yancy pops the “p” sound.

“So he heard—”

“Pretty sure.”

“Which means Herc might’ve—”

“Mmhmm.”

“Shit.”

They stand in silence for a moment, before Raleigh finally sighs and says, “Let’s get this over with, then,” reaching out and snagging Yancy’s hand to drag the other man through the halls, grip shaking slightly and perhaps a bit tighter than is absolutely necessary. If the pleased hum the older ranger makes is any indication, he doesn’t mind.

 

 

After their shower together earlier that morning, suiting up is a nonissue for the two of them. The most exciting—that is to say, fucking _terrifying_ —part is when Herc meets them at the assembly room with a raised eyebrow, a glare, and a deathly soft, “Finally decided to join us, eh?” After that, they quickly divest themselves of all their clothing but their underwear and undershirts. They pull on the black, circuitry-laden under-armor before the next, leathery layer is laid over top of it, followed by the actual plates of armor. Raleigh squirms uncomfortably when the spinal clamp is placed into the back, small metallic feet wiggling around on his skin until they align themselves where they need to go, the sensation akin to several very large bugs walking up his body in a line. Yancy just laughs at him, which earns the older man a glare from the younger.

Raleigh nearly inhales his relay gel at first, momentarily panicking when the helmet is first placed over his head. As soon as it starts draining, though, leaving a thin, almost-imperceptible layer on his skin, he remembers the tech’s instructions and exhales slowly, panic leaving him with the gentle rush of breath. He blinks rapidly when the yellow liquid drops below his eyes, surprised that he can’t really feel it still clinging to him, but in the end he shrugs it off. He manages to catch sight of Yancy doing the same thing, but decides that someone has to be the bigger man and just smirks at the older ranger instead of outright laughing at him.

It’s not until they’re standing in the mock conn pod, latched in, controls lighting up around them, the A.I. counting down from sixty in their ears, that the weight of the situation crashes into Raleigh.

“Holy shit,” he breathes, “we’re really about to do this.”

Yancy pauses from where he’d been flicking several switches to their ready position, glancing up at younger blond through the clear polymer of his faceplate. Raleigh realizes belatedly that their helmets apparently have a constant comm connection, which, obviously they do, he chastises himself.

“You sure about this, kid?” Yancy asks him, no judgment in his eyes or words. “We can call the whole thing off if you want. Just gotta hit the abort,” he gestures towards the large red button in the middle of the console between them, the word ABORT helpfully stenciled in all capitals beneath it. Raleigh shakes his head in reply, steeling his spine.

“No, I—I’m good Yance,” he replies, forcing a wry smile onto his face. “I just hope you can keep up with me, old man.”

Yancy’s laugh is the last thing he hears before the countdown reaches zero, and then everything goes absolutely insane.

No matter how much Raleigh has trained, has tried to mentally prepare himself, no matter how many times he’s read the textbook definitions of what drifting is like, it barely compares to the real thing. Everything he’s ever read says that the drift is silence, that the two pilots should simply cease to be _you_ and _me_ and instead fall into being _youandme_. They warn that there can be a brief rush of images, memories, as the two minds scrabble for common ground between them, but that, the more drift compatible a pair is and the more often they drift, the faster their nervous systems will sync up.

And they’re right.

Sort of.

The world falls away, and instead Raleigh finds himself swimming in a sea of memories, of thoughts, of _dreams_ , unable to tell which belong to him and which don’t. They whirl past in a near-silent rush, except this is a silence composed of so many overlapping sounds, voices, thoughts, that it’s almost like a background hum. Raleigh can occasionally catch a single word, a half-formed phrase, here or there, but for the most part he can’t understand anything unless he focuses on it.

An image, blurred around the edges, catches Raleigh’s eye, and, even though he knows he shouldn’t, he latches on momentarily before letting go. The moment, however, is all he needs.

He can tell it’s a dream, or a fantasy, or a barely-formed thought, both because what he sees has never happened and because the proportions are subtly wrong. In the image, Raleigh is on his back, knees pulled back towards his ears, as Yancy pounds into him mercilessly. Moans fall from both of their lips, each of them swallowing the other’s sounds as their mouths seal together in a desperate, passionate kiss. In the few scant seconds he witnesses, Raleigh hears himself panting Yancy’s name between thrusts, hears the older man whispering absolutely _filthy_ things into his skin, hears himself begging for more. And then it’s gone.

The thing Raleigh finds almost funny about the image is that he’s not sure if it’s his or not.

And then he can _feel_ Yancy right there, next to him, with him, _in_ him, and everything stops spinning. He opens his eyes, not remembering having closed them, and looks at the world around him in awe. There is, he decides, absolutely no way to describe seeing things from two points of view at once, of _feeling_ someone else sharing a body, a mind, a _soul_ , with you. He glances over at Yancy, sees the other man looking at him with something akin to awe on his features, finds that he already knew that, but somehow seeing and feeling it in addition to just _knowing_ it is all at once so much better.

‘ _Kid?_ ’ The question passes between them, like a whisper in their minds. Raleigh almost jumps at the not-there sound, fighting to keep the renewed flood of thoughts and memories from the forefront of his mind ( _Holy fuck, kid. Keep that up and I won’t last very fucking long_ , whispers the Yancy from the dream) and instead respond to the question he knows is contained within the single word.

‘ _I’m here, I’m okay. This is…_ ’

‘ _I know_ ,’ Yancy replies. ‘ _It’s fucking incredible, huh_?’

Dimly, Raleigh is aware of one of the techs congratulating them for getting to 100% synchronization on their first try, and then Herc’s voice as it comes over the comm and explains to them that they’ll be able to fully feel certain kinds of feedback from their simulacrum of a Jaeger, while others, such as catastrophic failure, will be dulled ‘for their sanity.’ The words bring Raleigh back to the present, out of wherever he’d been slipping, and he focuses on the words coming through the comm. Through their connection, he hears Yancy mentally snort at him.

“Alright boys,” Herc continues, “mission is a Cat’ 1, location Cabo. You’re being dropped in a T-80-class Jaeger, codename Horizon Brave. I’m sure you’re both familiar with ‘er. Make it work, gentlemen, and don’t disappoint. LOCCENT out.”

Suddenly, everything is lit up again, the relay gel on Raleigh’s face tingling before, suddenly, he can _see_ what his Jaeger is seeing, feel the hot, rancid air as it blows against the metal skin of the simulated behemoth they find themselves plugged into.

‘ _Woah_.’

Raleigh’s not certain if the thought is from himself or Yancy, but he doesn’t have the time to wonder, doesn’t have time to take in the almost life-like clarity of the office buildings and scenery being projected into their brains, before the Kaiju is on them.

“Holy _shit_ ,” Raleigh yells out in surprise as he feels claws rake down their left side—his side—and he and Yancy both side-step away from the attack on reflex, lashing out with their fists. The blow catches the Kaiju, a hulking monstrosity of claws and teeth, glowing, triangular mouth underneath an axe-shaped skull, in the side of the head, and the beast reels back before slashing back at them, trying to grab onto their arm. They try to dance back, but this Jaeger isn’t made for speed, and the monster gouges into their right shoulder, drawing a cry of pain from Yancy. The feedback flows through the drift, and Raleigh feels a phantom of it burning into his arm, but grits his teeth and instead slams his fist home into the offending creature’s neck, causing it to stagger back again before it can get a solid grip on their right arm.

“C’mon Yance,” he shouts at his partner, trying to get the older man back on his feet mentally, “we got this!”

‘ _Don’t crap out on me now, old man_ ,’ he chides mentally, not knowing where this new, more reckless, more _commanding_ , side of him is coming from, but not really caring. ‘ _Gotta help me take this son of a bitch down first_.’

Yancy doesn’t respond at first, but then a pulse of something _hot_ , something _hungry_ , crosses the drift between them.

‘ _Jesus kid, wouldn’t’ve pegged you as the type_.’

Before Raleigh can respond, can even think of what to say to that, the Kaiju recovers and takes another swipe at them. Yancy tries to deflect the creature’s claws, but two of the razor sharp points catch on something and dig in, ripping a large chunk from their midsection. The feedback that courses through them both makes Raleigh cry out through clenched teeth, nearly doubling over, and they stagger backwards a half-step. The Kaiju, seemingly sensing their distraction, lunges forward in a flurry of talons and rage, managing to get a grip on their Jaeger’s left knee and _twisting_.

Claws rip through metal plating and hydraulics like a knife through a rotten melon.

Raleigh’s entire world vanishes into a haze of red as he screams. Copper fills his mouth, and some part of him realizes that he’s somehow bitten his tongue. Blackness encroaches on the edges of his vision, his mind apparently refusing to tolerate this level of agony. It’s only when he hears Yancy calling desperately for him through the drift, lances of pain still arcing through his body, that he somehow manages to latch on to the ‘sound’ and push back the darkness.

“C’mon, Rals!” Yancy shouts at him aloud, the echo to Raleigh’s words mere seconds ago bouncing around the younger ranger’s helmet. “Don’t give up on me now, kid— _holy shit_!”

They’re both flung backwards as the Kauji, apparently satisfied with crippling their leg instead of outright tearing it off, slams bodily into their Jaeger. The harness bites into Raleigh’s flesh through his drivesuit as it catches him, and he has to restrain the urge to scream again as the entire weight of their Jaeger comes to bear on their damaged leg. Through some miracle—or perhaps due to Yancy’s fast thinking as he shuffles their weight from Raleigh’s side to his own—they manage to not fall on their asses. Before they even have time to recover, the beast’s glowing jaws are descending towards them through the viewport.

Raleigh doesn’t think, doesn’t even take time to consider the action. He lifts his arm and interdicts it between the monster’s screaming maw and the conn pod.

Teeth pierce metal, sending fresh sparks of feedback

The kaiju gives a contemptuous shake of its head, and, with a deceptively simple motion, rips off their left arm.

Raleigh’s pretty sure that getting a limb torn off counts as ‘catastrophic,’ because the fire that sweeps through his arm is enough that he almost— _almost_ —loses consciousness, only managing to not leave his partner alone because Yancy mentally reaches through the drift and _tugs_ Raleigh back to awareness. The action sends a fresh wave of torment through Raleigh’s mind, but he manages to somehow draw on some inner reserve of strength—perhaps it’s not his, some part of him thinks—and push it away. In desperation, without even really thinking about it, the two of them lash out with the stump of their arm, the jagged metal tearing furrows in the Kaiju’s face. They must’ve caught one of its eyes, because it rears back, letting up the pressure on them for a split second. It’s all they need.

Though the pain, the protests of his own body, the protests of the _Jaeger_ as it tries to obey their commands, Raleigh and Yancy plant their still-functional leg, brace themselves, and swing their remaining fist in a right arc, catching the Kaiju at the point where its skull meets its neck.

They both take no small amount of pleasure in the sounds, the feel, of house-sized bones cracking and breaking beneath their fist.

The Kaiju roars in pain, the sound deafening, as it finally lets up the attack, staggering back. They must’ve gotten lucky and hit a nerve cluster of some kind, either that or Yancy somehow knows what he’s doing better than Raleigh does, because one of monster’s arms hangs loosely at its side.

The momentum of the fight changes instantly.

This time, the two pilots don’t simply sit still and wait for it to come to them again. They limp forward, pressing the attack, delivering blow after blow to the Kaiju’s form. Yet, while they’re certainly _hurting_ it, they’re not doing enough to _kill_ it yet. Raleigh wracks his mind through the constant drone of pain emanating from his limbs, trying to remember the armaments on Horizon before Yancy supplies, ‘ _Cryo canons_ , _c’mon kid, keep it together_ ,’ with a tired mental shout.

Raleigh ignores the quip and instead sends a silent pulse of thanks the older ranger’s way, triggering the shoulder-mounted canon on his side with a thought and a voice command. When the weapon discharges after a half-second windup, sections of the Kaiju’s torso and head become coated in liquid nitrogen. The blue-tinted flesh flash-freezes.

‘ _C’mon!_ _Get it_ , get it!’ Raleigh mentally screams at his partner, just as Yancy lands a precisely aimed punch to the side of the monster’s face. Ice shatters. Sections of the Kaiju’s head simply slough away, and it falls to the ground, writhing and wailing in agony. Before it can recover, though, Yancy and Raleigh brace themselves on their right side, lift their crippled left leg, and drop it down sharply on the monster’s skull.

Silence dominates the simulator. Raleigh can feel the burn of the acidic blood coating his foot and leg as it slowly eats into the metal of the simulated Jaeger’s armor. The only sound is the fake wind blowing in their speakers, and his and Yancy’s panting as it fills the confined space of Raleigh’s helmet. The younger blond blinks sweat out of his eye, and his whole body shudders as the neural feedback from his arm and leg continues pulsing through him.

“Holy shit,” a voice finally breathes, and Raleigh thinks that someone, somewhere in LOCCENT, must not realize they’re hitting their mic. “They did it.”

There’s a brief sound of cheering before it cuts out, and then Herc’s voice is back, clapping still in the background.

“Well then, boys,” he says, voice tight, “congratulations on being the first team to beat your first sim.”

Raleigh sends a pulse of confusion through the drift as he lets out a dull, “Huh?” He doesn’t have the energy or brainpower for anything else at the moment. He’s met with a raised eyebrow and a feeling of understanding and realization from Yancy.

‘ _I heard that they actually set the simulator to the equivalent of a Cat’ 3 on a team’s first try, to make us understand the consequences of failing, but, I mean, I thought it was just a rumor_ ,’ the older man sends with a mental shrug, images of their fight, of the Kaiju nearly tearing them to pieces flashing across his mind. ‘ _Obviously not_.’

Raleigh feels a pulse of pride rush through him underneath the pain, and, strangely, the first thought to consciously cross his mind is, ‘ _I wish my mom could be here to see this_.’

Yancy laughs aloud at that, the sound weary but full of life.

‘ _Me too, kid. Although, y’know, mine probably would’ve been kinda weirded out. She never liked fighting, even if we are fighting giant lizards that want to kill us ‘n all_.’

It’s in that moment, though, amidst the constant background hum of their thoughts, that something flashes across Raleigh’s mind’s eye. At first it seems trivial, just another piece of extraneous, random information, but then he sees something that makes him do a double take. He examines the image, unfamiliar and yet not, once, twice, three times before he’s satisfied he’s not imagining it. Terror settles in his gut like a cold weight.

No, he thinks desperately to himself, that can’t be right. That _can’t_ be right, it’s _not fucking possible_.

‘ _Rals_?’ Yancy asks, no doubt feeling his distress mounting. ‘ _You okay? What’s not possible_?’

But Raleigh doesn’t answer, _can’t_ answer, can’t _breathe_. His mind is still stuck on that image, on that damn _picture_ , on—

Panic sweeps over him like a searing hot blanket, and he wrenches his body forward to smash the red ABORT button on the console, almost weeping—though whether in loss or relief, he’s not sure—when he feels Yancy’s presence in his mind suddenly vanish along with the feedback from their wounded Jaeger. The harness clicks several times, and then Raleigh is falling to the floor on shaking knees that won’t support him, ripping his helmet off and gasping for air, trying to pull a breath into his lungs. He feels more than hears the vibrations of Yancy doing the same, of the older man kneeling beside him, asking him what’s wrong, what does Raleigh need, what can he do to help?

Raleigh ignores him in favor of staggering to his feet, drivesuit heavy as he exits the simulator. He further ignores the angry cries of, “Becket, get the fuck back here!” from someone—Herc?—behind him, and then he’s running as fast as he can with the metal of the suit weighing him down. He hears the same voice yelling at Yancy to get out of his drivesuit before pursuing him, because I’ll be damned if I’m letting rookies just walk off with equipment twice in one damn day. Hears Yancy argue. Then doesn’t hear much of anything at all except the heavy thuds of the suit’s boots as they impact the ground.

The blond somehow makes it back to their room, struggling to put in the lock code with the gloves he’s still wearing. Raleigh thinks he would’ve reprimanded himself for not searching through Yancy’s mind for the meaning of the four numbers if he’d been in a better state of mind, ideally one where he was in the mood to joke or even think anything other than a litany of _oh god oh god please no please no please don’t let it be true oh god please_.

The door unseals as the keypad flashes green, and he swings the heavy metal barrier out and away and stumbles into their room. He looks around frantically, eyes finally settling on the dresser where Yancy keeps his more personal belongings. Crossing the space in a few long strides, Raleigh rips the drawers open until he finds what he’s looking for: the small, leather-bound photo album Yancy had placed there when they moved in. Undoing the buckle clasp is almost impossible, but he somehow manages, and then he’s flipping through the pages with a sort of frenetic energy, drawing on the memory he’d gotten from Yancy to tell him where to look. He stops about three-quarters of the way back—‘ _Page twenty-two_ ,’ he thinks to himself—and quickly scans the three photographs that occupy the page before his hand stops over one of a woman holding a bundle of blankets, looking tired and yet so bright and full of life at the same time.

Raleigh’s guts freeze solid. He can’t breathe again.

The door flings itself open, and Raleigh hears the sounds of Yancy practically falling into the room.

“Rals, kid, what’s wrong?” the older man asks, tone stretched thin, breathless. “What is it?”

Raleigh looks back at him, takes in the way Yancy is fisting his own hair so tightly with one hand that his knuckles are turning white, the way the his partner’s eyes are filled with terror, and Raleigh feels revulsion crawl up his throat. Because he’s not about to make things any better.

“Yance,” he somehow manages to whisper, “can you get this picture out for me?”

The other ranger’s eyebrows knit together for a second before he nods, moving towards Raleigh without a word and doing as he’s asked. Raleigh clasps the picture in trembling, gloved fingers, turning it over. There, on the back, in sharp, jagged script, are the words, ‘Yancy is born, Nov 7, 1995.’ The younger blond lets out a shaky breath.

“You said this is a picture of your biological mom, right?” he asks. He has to. He has to be _sure_. “When I asked you how you got your name, you said it was a picture of you and your mom, with your name on the back?”

“Yeah,” Yancy answers, voice shaking, uncertain, _scared_ , “it is, but what does that have to do with—”

“Yancy,” Raleigh interrupts him, “the woman in this photograph, your biological mom, she…”

He trails off, not wanting to say the words, but knowing that he has to anyway. He flips the photograph back over so that the tired, smiling face of Dominique Becket stares back at them both.

”She’s my mom, too.”


End file.
